How can I get my family to stop pawning off useless crap on me?

Just accept it, and then give it away or toss it yourself. In some areas if you leave anything interesting looking out at the curb not in a bag it will be gone in hours.

Yeah. It sells alright. It sells to the parents and grandparents of all the rest of us who are getting useless crap pawned off on us, and the cycle continues.

You’re unfamiliar with the concept of “regifting”?

Because now the person with the unwanted gift has to deal with what they’ve been handed. It’s worse when the “gift” is really just being given because the person giving it doesn’t want it but also doesn’t want to throw it out. What kind of “gift” is that?

Going to the thrift store is a trip I wouldn’t have to take, time I wouldn’t have to spend, and gas I wouldn’t have to pay for, if someone didn’t give me a thoughtless “gift”. Same goes for trash. Now I have to put it in a bag, take that bag downstairs and out to the trash can, then take that can to the curb.

It’s only a little bit about the time/effort/money wasted and mostly the fact that the giver has no respect for your time/effort/money. To top it off they’ve hid this disrespect behind a guise of gift-giving so that complaining about it looks ungrateful. Thankfully, most of the time this sort of gift-giving it is simply thoughtless and not malicious. I dislike thoughtlessness a lot though, especially at the expense of others.

Maybe you could start giving them even worse crap?

It took me 20 years with my mother in law. Now, if she sees something she thinks I would love - she takes a picture of it. She’s had to come to terms with the fact that I am not going to treasure my husband’s second grade homework - I didn’t keep my own kid’s second grade homework! I probably hurt her feelings, but she’s more or less come to terms.

However, now she finds a big box of keys at a garage sale - and not cool turn of the century keys,but 1970s keys - at a garage sale, buys them and gives them to my sixteen year old son. Because what every sixteen year old boy wants is a box of keys. (They went into the trash).

Yes this. The cycle of so many family things will end with me.

If you feel that the gift is such an imposition, say “no thank you” and don’t take it. The fact that someone was wrong about whether you’d want some random piece of junk is not a sign that they have “no respect for your time/effort/money” or are “thoughtless.” Most of the time, they are simply wrong. Your interpretation of this behavior is bizarre and illogical.

I’ve come to the conclusion that no yard sale is worth my time sitting there quibbling with people over the price of a piece of junk. My life was so much easier the day I gave up yard/garage sales and just hauled everything to GoodWill.

Just turn the gift into a “Craft Project” and give it back as an even better gift. Take that broken cell phone, glue macaroni all over it, spray paint it gold covered with glitter and now it’s a super-artsy paper weight! Make sure that each person gets back the thing that they gave you. Make it clear that you LOVE your new hobby and will do this to EVERY gift you receive. “I just love to give it back to the very person who gave me the opportunity to improve it!”

If it was ME, I’d just say thank you and when the pile was high enough I’d take it all to Goodwill. Expired food though would go straight to the trash. It’s such a sweet well-meaning thing to do. Before he was deported my SO would go as far as picking up useless junk from the side of the road and offer it to me like treasure. In his culture nothing is wasted so it really is like gold.

I love this idea so much. I could never do it, of course. Mostly because I couldn’t be efficient about it. But it’s a marvellous idea.

If you moved a thousand miles away, would that make it easier? Or would they mail things? You’d have to make sure you visited in a car to small to carry much away.

I just throw everything out or give it away. I take after my mother - we are both almost anti-hoarders. Well, she was when she was alive. If I had my druthers my house would have like three pieces of furniture and I would throw everything out. My SO doesn’t mind clutter and I’ve gotten used to it but I still periodically get rid of everything in sight.

If they “gift” you with these items when you’re visiting them, can’t you just set them aside and *forget *to take them with you when you leave?

If you like your mother calling repeatedly to tell you that you forgot to take those things, then sure.

Its mine as well, and its how I had to explain it to my mother in law. SHE saw it as being thoughtful - and “no thank you” was not an answer she would take “but I thought of YOU!!! when I saw it.” or “I’ve been treasuring this piece of junk forever and I need to give it to someone!!!” And I looked at it and thought “you are foisting responsibility for your emotional attachment to this object onto me.”

If its bizarre and illogical - he isn’t alone. And if the “gift givers” in his life are like my mother in law “no thank you” doesn’t work unless you want a guilt trip and hurt feelings.

Think of it this way - would you gift someone a puppy? Probably not. Because a puppy takes work and care and commitment. You have to feed the puppy and walk the puppy. So you only gift someone a puppy when you’ve talked to that someone about the puppy, or if its someone you know VERY well (like a partner). Stuff - whether a box of old keys or a Ming vase - also takes work and care and commitment. Maybe the amount of work is tossing the box of keys into the trash, but some days it seems we can’t manage to get the paper towels from the kitchen into the trash and the junkmail piles up - I don’t need more trash in my life. Would you gift me a used kleenex? Why not? Because its useless and I’ll throw it in the trash? Maybe its just the burden of dusting and displaying it. But any gift comes with a burden - as a giver - you need to be pretty sure the receiver is up for the burden.

This all came to a head with my brother in laws death and all the STUFF left behind that needed to be treasures, but which she didn’t have room for. I have a bigger house! I have a basement not filled with bins! But I don’t WANT a basement filled with bins and crappy furniture and to use dishes I didn’t pick out. And the few things I’ve kept in my life - I don’t want to throw out to make room for someone else’s life.

TriPolor says he rents a dumpster - he may be joking, but I suspect there is a kernel of truth even if it isn’t wholly true. That dumpster takes money to rent. And filling it takes time - a Saturday he could spend doing something more interesting than filling a dumpster with junk his family can’t just throw away. Every few years I go into my basement and start cleaning out the junk. Very little of it is mine - things I wanted and sought. A lot of it is my husband’s or kids - and kids go through a lot of junk - but a lot of it is junk that I, or my husband or my kids - were “gifted.” I don’t like spending that day in the basement when I could be here, or reading, or watching a movie.

A nitpick: the term is “palming off”, not “pawning off”. If you pawn something off, you’re using it as security for something in return, such as cash.

Not so.

Some say that “pawn off” started as an error, some disagree, but like it or not, it has entered the lexicon.

If you don’t live nearby, you can overpack a little bit, and thereby limit the amount of crap you have space to haul back.

If you don’t want the stuff, why the heck are you bringing it into your home or basement, let alone letting it pile up so much that you must pay for extra trash hauling? Drop it off at a charity on your way home or set it directly out with your trash.
If you think someone is trying to harm you via gifting, why care if their feelings are hurt by your repeated polite refusals? And if, as I suspect you actually know, they aren’t trying to harm you but are merely clueless, clue them in or ditch the stuff yourself. Sometimes you have to lift a finger to do some minor thing for someone or speak up and tell them you don’t want to. If this burden is too onerous, maybe interacting with others is not for you.