How about a useless piece of land in a failed development with a hopelessly tangled title involving multiple deaths, remarriages, divorces, half-sibs, & assorted hangers-on across multiple generations. Located a thousand miles from anyone who ought to be on the deed all of whom mostly don’t communicate?
But at least the tax assessor can find me every year.
Gee thanks, Mom & Dad; you really shouldn’t have.
Does it come with wafers?
@Elendil_s_Heir: If that’s directed at me all I can say is “Whoosh!??!”
When I was cleaning out my apartment in preparation for moving I discarded a lot of things. Some of it was harder than you might think - but I figured out tricks for safely discarding large amounts of sharp objects, like knives and cutlery.
An old roommate had left some barbells in the apartment and I had to figure out how to discard them. I can’t just leave them on the sidewalk, they roll. They would rip through any garbage bags. I finally ended up breaking them down, putting the weights and center bar into a couple of heavyweight duffels I was also discarding and putting them in the service courtyard of the building with the other large pickup items, like furniture.
About an hour later I saw the resident hoarder carting them up to his apartment. Go figure.
If you love your children (or heirs), label your photos.
When Mom felt she was getting old, she brought three boxes of photos to my house and we spent a week sorting and labeling them. I thought that was very forward-looking, and it was.
Unfortunately, when I was sorting through her things I found three or four more boxes. And three boxes of photos that she had inherited from her mother. And a box or two that her mother had inherited from her mother-in-law. A handful of photos in Great-Grandma’s boxes were probably inherited from older relatives. One was on a 1"x1.5" piece of glass.
I’m nowhere near sorting through all of them. I’ve learned not to feel guilty about throwing out:
If I knew that a photo was of a non-relative, one I never met, they’d go, too. I’m trying to get them all sorted so that my children don’t have to continue the tradition. I’m scanning them and I’ve sent a few packs to cousins.
Label your photos. Toddler second cousins all look alike.
I have all of this, plus more, from my parents. My mother-in-law, if she has any of this, is sitting on it (she has a bedroom full of boxes, which are full of papers), and probably the papers are deteriorating. She’s not sure which vaccinations he had. Otherwise my husband has maybe 6 pictures of himself from birth to 21, when we met. There are some slides, somewhere, but no prints. His dad preferred to take pictures of landscapes.
My own albatross? My grandmother wanted me to have her sherbet glasses. They are sitting in a box in my sister-in-law’s house. I don’t really want them, but I don’t want to ditch them.
My own albatross is the formal china and glassware that we received as wedding gifts. Barely used in 28 years.
When my mom was pregnant with me, she made a hand sewn wall hanging of my zodiac sign and after I was born added my birth details around the outside of it.
I have zero interest in astrology and zero belief in horoscopes. But my mom is no longer with us so there is no way to give away such a personal item nor throw it away. It will be in my possession forever.
My FIL was a fine amateur painter. IRL he was an art and shop teacher. We ended up with over a dozen of his paintings. I love them–I really do–but once we down-sized we could no longer hang them all. A few the kids have taken, but there are still a half-dozen sitting in a box in our guest room that I just cannot bring myself to discard them, and my wife even less so.
Dining room furniture. I have this enormous dining room table that I used to hide under as a child when my parents were having screaming matches over the phone about custody and alimony payments. That’s what I remember of that table. I hate it, but “oh, it’s an heirloom.” No, it’s not - it’s monstrosity harboring only awful memories and when I get the opportunity I plan to take an ax to it.
Oh, then there’s the creepy, haunted baby. It’s a Bye Lo baby, the design of which was legit based off a dead baby the creator happened to walk by in a hospital. So, yeah, my mom feels like it’s incredibly special because my grandmother bought it for me, but even when she got it for me I was never allowed to touch it, so it “lived” (ha!) in a drawer in my mom’s house until she moved. Now I’ve got it and have to keep reminding the kids not to talk about the doll I’m selling on ebay in front of grandma.
Thank you. And a fine bit of work it is. I’d never seen it. Obviously.
The half pieced quilt top my great-grandmother started. And she died in the mid-seventies.
Mom kept it until she moved into a retirement community. I thought I’d finish it up, but then I took a good look and it’s all icky 70s polyester. I think I’ll see if anyone wants it for free.
I see those polyester quilt tops all the time in junk stores. I used to give a couple bucks for them to use in dog beds. Then I became aware of bed bugs.
No more junk store quilts for me.
Not saying @zyada yours are ridden. Just junk stores are.
I wouldn’t get your hopes up. In terms of supply and demand, there are thousands more Franklin Mint or mint coin sets than there are people willing to pay good money for them.
But deep down you probably know that. You mentioned getting an appraisal, but that was after admitting they have no collectors value.
ETA:
Ohhh… or did you mean getting an appraisal to show mom they have no collectors value?
FWIW, your post made me LOL!
Wait … you don’t expect to outlive your mother?
I think @aceplace57 means when she passes he’ll inherit them, put them in his basement someplace, forget about / ignore them, and let his heirs deal with the collection after he too passes umpteen years/decades later.
Right now that’s my plan for the useless land you found so funny. Which it really is. I’m just glad it’s worth bupkiss. Were it instead worth serious money the titling mess would very contentious. But would still need to be unscrambled before the parcel could be sold and the value distributed as cash.
Going through my mothers stuff, I found a packet of HER mothers stuff–with a pile of stock certificates for a mine someplace in AZ. Now I am left with a dilemma, since these are probably worth more to a paper collector than as a small chunk of a slightly copper rich hole in the ground–see what the stock is worth, if any, see what the paper is worth (figure $100), and then distribute the largess to each branch of the family?
[Of the 4 children, 2 are living, and the the 2 dead have only children. Makes the math easy]
My maternal grandfather started a quilt, I think before my mother was even born. She arranged to have someone finish it in the 80s. It’s now on her guest bed. I’ll probably end up with it at some point.
But it reminds me of another half-finished project. My paternal grandmother started an embroidery project many decades ago and decided she didn’t really like it. Since I didn’t take to crocheting or knitting, I did dabble in embroidery and worked on it for some weeks, some decades ago.
It’s sitting in the guest room. I could throw it out and no one would know. My parents have never asked about it, and my grandmother passed away last year.
I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon.
My mom turns 88 in December. We recently moved her from my hometown closer to family. She bought a much smaller home and got rid of a lot of stuff. The file cabinet with the coin collection made the trip to the new house.
It’ll be my headache eventually. I probably won’t sell it to just anybody. I would hate thinking it was melted down for the silver and other metals.
My heirs won’t have any sentimental attachment to the coin collection. Silver and other metals will be even more valuable in twenty years. It’ll be a nice payout for the next generation.