Hoarding

Because we are doing the last of emptying the house that my father's second wife lived in since 1946, the subject of keeping unnecessary thing that are a burden to your descendants came up this weekend, as it often does in these situations. Our daughter-in-law found a strategy that a reditor reported, approximately this.

Here was a trick my brother used.  He would find boxes of things that could be thrown away or donated. Then he would replace them with empty boxes. My father never knew things were missing, but it also did not leave empty spots on the shelves that would just have been replaced with...more stuff. My brother had slowly started to thin things out, so when my father died, we weren't having to start at square one on the cleaning out process. 

It was not only one person who created the many full closets on the second floor filled with children's toys and dress patterns, nor the garage with old furniture, gardening chemicals, and lamps. The surface layers and some of the deeper piles were clearly created by Ruth, who just died, but it was quickly obvious that my father who died in 2004 had not been responsible in getting rid of things in his last years either. As we got to very bottom, it became clear that Ruth's parents, who died in the 1970s and 80s, had also not done their duty of weeding through old calendars, sheet music, and cookbooks. It was in fact clear that when they had moved into the house in 1946 they must have brought considerable amounts of saved stuff from the previous house even then.  Sunday School books from 1915 (in Swedish), depression glass, 78 rpm records, and somehow, decorative glass from a Packard hearse.

I also just found a use for the oldest of your empty boxes.