Boomer burden
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- June
- 4
Here’s a helpful new tool for those dealing with their parents’ lifetime accumulation of stuff: “The Boomer Burden, a book by Julie Hall, tackles the difficult job of how to clean out a childhood home.
At some points, it’s a painful read. A few of us here in the office were simultaneously laughing and cringing at chapter titles like “The Hearse Doesn’t Have a Trailer Hitch.”
But Hall, a professional estate liquidator, hopes that families make use of her book in advance, planning out a strategy while parents are still alive and living in their home.
For less than $15 (cheaper on Amazon), I think this is one book we should all add to the pile of bedside reading.
Have you had to clean out your parents’ home? Anything you’ve learned in the process?
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 10:59 am by Linda Lombroso.
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Baby boomer Linda Lombroso was born in Queens and grew up in Port Washington. She began her journalism career at New York Magazine and Rolling Stone, but left to pursue a master's degree in elementary education. Shortly afterward, she returned to magazines as an editor at US magazine, but again left the field, this time for the birth of her first child. Linda and her family moved from Manhattan to New Rochelle in 1988. After spending 10 years as a stay-at-home mother, she joined The Journal News as a police reporter in 1997. She's been a Life & Style writer since 2000. This is the only year her three children are teenagers at the same time, which means she undergoes a daily critique of hair, makeup and wardrobe. Her parents still live in Port Washington Ń and they like everything she wears.
Unfortuantely, I did have to help my mom leave her home and it was very difficult. I do not want someone to tell me to throw out everything. My mom was going to a one room assisted living from a very large apartment. Every week before she was to move I would try to help her go through her things. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t part with anything. Depression era person, cannot throw out anything, that was her. In the end we dumped almost everything and donated almost all of the furniture. It was sad. I try to throw out myself and it is difficult for me too. Mother like daughter I guess.
But when my husband and his sisters were cleaning out their father’s apartment it was easy for me because I had no emotional attachment to anything. They were all there saying “Oh, dad’s cup, remember”, and I said it’s a crappy, chipped, old cup! My sister-in-law said I was an asset there because I saw it without the memeories.
I’m in the middle cleaning out my parents’ home right now! I write about it on my blog. It is an enormous, exhausting task. Freecycling has been a big help. I had a bunch of people stop by and take things away today. Better to give them to a good home than take them to the dump. A tag sale is a lot of work for no money. Best to give it away. I recommend everyone go to yahoo and find their local freecycle group. It’s fun!
My mom moved from her large home after my dad passed away, and moved into a 2 bedroom condo. Amazing what you can fit into a 2 bedroom condo – she couldn’t throw out anything either. So she had a lot of boxes stashed in the basement and garage for a while.
Then her own mother passed away, and we cleaned out that house, which is the house my mom grew up in and so my grandmother had been in it for about 60+ years. Seeing how difficult it was to clean out that house gave my mom the incentive to clean out her own ‘junk’ and not make any of us do it later on.
One thing I’ve learned – old ladies (and I use that term affectionately) sure can be packrats, and they’re very creative about where they hide things when they live alone. You need to check EVERYTHING – every pocket, every shoe box, leaf through book pages (for cash), every nook and cranny in the attic. Don’t overlook anything.