Back in the era when your parents died when you were 20ish and nobody owned much shit, say ~1880 to ~1950, keeping and re-using stuff from prior generations was the norm.
Now when parents die when you’re in your 40s or 60s, and you’ve had an established and well-stocked household for decades already, the attraction of their cast-offs is quite understandably reduced to near zero.
And that’s before we consider technological obsolescence and the changing consumer tastes of our modern consumerist culture that was more or less invented on the heels of WW-II.
To somebody in 1940, an 1880s frying pan or nightstand was substantially identical to what they could buy new in a store. So taking Mom’s or Grandma’s old one when they died worked just fine. The functional and stylistic differences between a 1964 model toaster and a 2024 model toaster is … much greater. Or a 1964 lamp or phone or …
Or even a 1964 frying pan. Yes, you can still buy a new cast iron frying pan today much the same your GGG-Grandma had. But there are sure a lot more kinds of 2024 frying pans than that, and cast iron is very much a minority interest these days for a darn good set of reasons.
A final difference is household size. A woman born in 1900 could expect to have 30 grandkids. One born in the 1940s could expect to have 10-ish. One born in the 1960s might have 4 or might have zero. So Olde Tyme Grandma’s much more meager collection of stuff would be split 30 ways. Modern Boomer Grandma’s much larger collection of stuff may only have 1 or 3 people in her downline to take all of it. Not gonna happen.
At some point old people die and they free up space in houses. While USA population is still increasing, that is solely because of immigration; we don’t have a high enough birth rate to even maintain our current population. I’m confident that space will eventually free up.
I don’t know why someone want to keep old greeting cards and outgrown uniforms you will never wear again. TBH most of what you describe in the OP sounds like garbage. My parents have boxes of that trash in the basement and all it does is collect dust and spiders.
I think the longer you live, the more nostalgia you feel. Teenagers? It’s hard to feel nostalgia about “the good 'ole days” if “the good 'ole days” were 10 years ago. LOL
Also, to be honest, I wouldn’t care about the stuff you listed, either.
I suppose it depends on the kid. Kid Cheesesteak, Zoomer, has been a packrat/magpie from the very first.
The Mrs. mentioned recently that she planned to give his old, empty, unused, and too small to fit anymore Scout Sash to a new scout whom it might actually fit. He put his foot down, that was my first sash, it no longer has any patches on it, and it doesn’t fit, but it was mine and I’m not giving it up.
I should invest in a storage company cuz this kid is going to send them a fortune someday.
I assumed @PastTense was talking about people who had been in their 30s 30 or 40 years ago.
But will the space free up in high population density areas where people apparently want to live? There’s already plenty of space if you don’t mind where the space is.
My husband’s father recently died (his mom had died a few years previously) and he and his siblings spent a while cleaning up their house which the parents had been in for… probably almost fifty years? They had a lot of stuff and very little of it got taken by my husband or his siblings. My husband would have been interested in some of the furniture, but we live across the country and it wasn’t really worth carting it here. His brother and his wife were actually in the middle of trying to declutter, so were trying not to add more stuff, and his sister’s husband basically said he was not in favor of anything being brought back. No one wanted the china, so we saved it for wedding presents for the grandchildren (who at least won’t already have table settings already bought). No one wanted the lace tablecloths or the big books of newspaper clippings (we might have taken some pictures of the latter). There were a few things that the siblings took, like a handmade quilt or a painting with sentimental value; the grandchildren took a couple of the knicknacks (there was a bell collection and each grandchild took a bell; the grandchildren took a lot of the craft stuff). But it was really a wakeup call to me that I need to start decluttering anything I don’t really want / that isn’t giving me pleasure right now, because when I die my kids are not going to want my junk that I’m saving “just in case they might want it.”
About the only thing that all the siblings were willing to take was the silver, and now I’m low-key regretting that as our share is stacked away in a pile in one of our rooms, because we’re not really going to use it for anything.
Observing my nieces and my friends’ kids who are in the 10-18yo range now, I agree with @LSLGuy 's assessment. My nieces don’t even care about their own stuff from a year ago that they begged everyone to buy for them.
All of their memories are digital. You don’t need your 4th grade softball jersey when you had 1000 pics and videos of you actually playing softball and all of your friends. Your favorite moments get shuffled up to Instagram and you can instantly recall them years later.
Wouldn’t you love to have that sort of archive of your childhood?! I would love it!
Kids now absolutely do love stuff but they love their stuff. They love shopping for it and unboxing it and covering it with stickers until the fun of all that is worn off and it’s time to shop for some more. I think kids have way too much stuff, just like their parents (people my age) do because stuff is SO readily available.
I think Zoomer kids that are super sentimental about stuff like Kid @Cheesesteak are few and far between.
Obviously I don’t know the story here, but if the teens were living with old sick grandparents who died they might be going into the foster system now. As I understand it, in that case a lot of times they don’t get to take much with them. Same would be true if they’re moving in with other relatives who just don’t have any space.
Yeah, and I’d add that because stuff is so readily available, they may have way too much stuff, but they aren’t attached to it. When I was growing up that one dump truck I had was the one dump truck I had (okay, also, my parents were really not into giving me “boy”-coded toys) and so I was very attached to it and actually saved it for my own kids. My kids have a bunch of toy cars and trucks and aren’t particularly attached to any of them. I’d be shocked if they had any thought to save any of their present toys for their own kids.
Remember what it was like pre-internet to collect things? Toys, books, coins, postcards, records, souvenirs… The collection was an accomplishment to take pride in and could serve as a conversation piece when friends came over.
Now that anyone can order most anything from the internet, new or used, the thrill of seeking out and finding such items is not quite the same.
Already ninja’d by everyone who cited storage space. My parents keep threatening to find a smaller house (they’re not fooling anyone any more…I’m convinced they’re both leaving the current house feet-first) and once and a while my mom will enthusiastically tell me about all the family china coming my way. And then I remind her that I live in a one-bedroom apartment, and that were I to be forced to take in eighty pounds of ancient porcelain, I’ll take up skeet shooting the next day.
In all seriousness, though my place is still the best-stocked video store never open to the public (film nerd + love of physical media) you could fit all the true memoriabilia I’ve acquired into a couple of drawers, and in the case of travel photos, online. I decided a while back that I’d rather have experiences than stuff, and that’s where my money goes.
I wish I had kept more stuff - not greeting cards or clothes, but things like photos and programs. I have lately realized that I don’t have many specific memories of my teenage years. * Photos/programs would have helped with pinning down some memories , not all, but some. I have four or five photos of me between 14 and 20 and two programs from high school events , one of which I found online and two pieces of jewelry from that time period. Aside from that, I don’t remember many details.
* Brought on by finding out that someone I hadn’t spoken to in nearly 40 years had died.
I’ve been reducing my “hoard” of stuff. With the proliferation of Little Free Libraries in my area, I’ve been able to reduce my load of books. But the important thing was that I was able to get rid of a box of “bits” from a lifetime of painting miniatures and building models. I took it down to the local game store where the owner was glad to have it. I also threw out a whole bunch of “Cool and interestingly-shaped” items that I was going to turn into gaming terrain. I have enough store-bought terrain and none of my homemade stuff looks as good, anyway. So I have enough closet space for the boxes I’ve still kept.
That’s it right there. Without the hunt, what’s the point?
How many of our keepsakes are actually unique and unreplaceable? And so much of it is digitized now: Music, comic books, heck, just books in general. That treasure in a plastic slab or protective case that you just look at? I can get the same experience from a Google search. I can revisit and reminisce about all that stuff on an iPad instead of devoting a whole room to it like I did 20 years ago. The less attraction to “stuff” is more about changing technology than differing generational mores.
Damn you! I have a bad habit of saving event programs and have just started going through the boxes where they have been lying pointlessly for decades. I figured I’d take one more look at this stuff, wallow a bit in the memories, then toss it all.
Now you’ve got me thinking maybe I’ll want to take another walk down memory lane if I’m still around later.