I wonder just how much we’re being ‘put-on’ by these discoveries. I can easilly see an elderly person chuckling quietly to themselves, imagining the consternation of their relatives upon finding jars labled “empty”, and such. Years and years of anticipatory amusement… It might explain why they sit and quietly laugh at a joke no one hears.
Come to think of it, it sounds like a fun idea…
Tranquilis: That’s been my theory of Stonehenge.
“Hey guys! I have a brilliant idea! Let’s stand up a bunch of rocks. We can line them up with the sun and stars and stuff. Then… (hee hee!)… in a few thousand years, people will be falling all over themselves with weird “calender theories”! Hahaha! It’ll be great! It’s just too bad we won’t be around to see it.”
Yup. That appeals to my sense of humor. Saaaayyy… Anyone know where I can find a buncha monoliths…? 
Not in my dad’s case. (For one thing, he never made it to “elderly”.) It was quite routine for him to label everything and either write or engrave his name in everything he owned to prove it was his (to the point of defacing items that would otherwise be quite valuable now). And the engraving was usually done with a drill.
And, extra sneaky trick, he didn’t write his name in the inside front cover of a book, no, but rather the back cover. His theory was that unscrupulous individuals that may abscond with your books, would know to cover up the name in the front or tear out that first blank page, but no one would never look for one in the back. A-ha! Thievery foiled! (He also never lent anyone anything, ever. Not even for five minutes.)
No, I think his labelling was almost obseesive-compulsive. He had to label the empty jar “Empty” because it would otherwise be the only unlabelled jar and that would be just plain wrong!
My dear dotty mother-in-law is a saver of everything and, bless her, she really tries to keep her everythings organized. I still dread the cleaning-out when she’s gone, though. She keeps a little dish of bread clips on her sink (you know, those little squares of plastic?); she has one entire storage box of non-working Christmas light strings (“spare bulbs,” she says); there’s another box that contains nothing but empty craft paint bottles (“good for touch-ups when you repaint the house,” she says).
MY mother, OTOH, is a firm believer in “when you’re done with it, pitch it.” Which she has taken so far that she no longer has any baby pictures of her four children.
My grandfather was a fabulous guy and a pack rat. It took my mom approximately 8 years (with help from assorted relatives) to clean the house.
Main categories:
Art supplies–he was an artist, my grandmother liked crafts & knitting. Tons of oil paints, clay, brushes, yarn, odds & ends that had the potentil for “found art”. The still-usable stuff we donated to a high school art program.
Furniture–he experimented w/making furniture, plus had almost all the furniture our family had ever owned down to my great-grandparents’ bedstead. He had enough furniture to fully furnish another house.
Books–probably a few thousand, give or take.
Mail, bills, financial statements, lots of letters from friends, diaries, etc. Some of the junk mail dated to the 1960’s; personal letters dated to the 1920’s.
Family photos (again, dating to the early 1900s).
Knick-knacks–he did a lot of traveling and many friends who traveled, so he had a lot of touristy (not quite real art) stuff from around the world.
I think the most jaw-dropping thing my mother found was the gay porn under his bed 
We had kinda known that both he and my grandma weren’t entirely straight, but I think my mother was taken aback.
Let’s file that last one under Things I’m Glad We Didn’t Find When Cleaning Out Grandpa Bob’s Place, shall we?
Anyway. When my family moved into the house my parents now live in, the previous proprietor had been a bit of a pack rat himself. A former jeweller in his dotage, he had saved large quantities of inexpensive semiprecious stones and jewelry findings. As well, for some reason, as an enormous sack of cheap but fancy-looking pens in individual pseudo-velvet cases.
The most… evocative pieces were a chronology of gardening equipment, especially shears. (He had a horrible, scraggly tangle of rosebushes in the back yard.) About a dozen or so; you could tell he bought one every year or couple of years, thinking This year I’ll finally tackle those rosebushes, and never got anywhere, then forgot he had one already and bought a new one the subsequent year.
There were tons of miscellaneous crap filling the basement, some of which was not finally dislodged until my dad and brother renovated and finished the basement as an apartment for the latter. Also, he had totally neglected the decor of the house and the back garden - we had to repaint and refinish many of the rooms, especially the kitchen, living room, and bathroom, and totally rip out and replant the garden.
Well, he was an infirm old man, and didn’t have anyone to help him with it, so we can’t blame him for the state the house was in when he moved into an apartment. (Besides, it was inexpensive)
We were irritated to receive his continuing subscription to Playboy, however.
My dad’s mother is also a pack rat. My dad hated it, and stopped taking my younger brother and me to visit, partly because the house is now just pathways amongst all the junk, and partly because it’s a fire waiting to happen. I remember seeing empty tissue boxes stacked up. They gave my cousin (who’s my age) the balls out of roll-on deodorant to play with!! :eek:
My grandmother makes a big deal about how she had to grow up during the Depression. Given the ages of some of the other pack rats mentioned in this thread, do you think that’s a factor?
Ironically, my father’s parents suffered more during the Depression than my mother’s (whose father was the aforementioned packrat) and it’s actually vice versa—my father’s parents are neat as a pin. Very frugal, but certainly not packrats.
Maybe, but I know a lot of people who grew up in the depression and very few are pack-rats now. Plus, I know some people born in the 70s who are the greatest pack-rats I’ve ever met! (Some take “reduce/re-use/recycle” waaaaay too far…)
< George Carlin >
Ever notice that other people’s stuff is shit, but your shit is stuff!?
< /George Carlin >
I first opened this thread because I have my own dead uncle Bud. Well, “Buddy”, actually; his given name was George. My paternal grandmother refused to call her five children by their given names in an attempt to avoid anyone thinking she was their mother. She was a bit of a nut, evidently.
My folks used to keep an eye on an elderly man who lived next door to them. You know, chase away the people that wanted to “trim” his trees, etc. Dad would mow the lawn, and Stepmom would take Mr. Bates (don’t know his first name) to the grocery store every Saturday. 8am on the dot, he’d be waiting outside for her to pick him up.
His house had no a/c, he had no tv, and he would sit by his window every day until it was time to get the mail or go to bed.
Anyway, back to the grocery store…he’s 90 something years old, and would buy candy and stuff like that (hey, good for him) and my folks would take him over dinner. But the strange thing was, in all the years that they looked out for him and took him to the store, he never ONCE bought toilet paper.
Mr. Bates left my folks his house when he died, and they fixed it up and rented it out. And no, there was no huge stash of toilet paper in the house.
When my great-aunt died, we were in charge of cleaning out her house. She kept tons of magazines and books, and tiny little pictures of cats that she had cut out of magazines were everywhere. The strangest thing was a small manilla envelope I found that contained…shudder…cat teeth.
I’ve always heard that same thing attributed to Howard Hughs… maybe senile minds think alike 'eh?
Have you checked Ebay?
With regard to getting your 1/15 of the estate, don’t assume the trains are inconsequential items for the kids. While old Lionel trains may get more collector attention than HO equipment, some HO equipment is quite valuable. Some new brass engines cost $3,000 or more apiece. New brass cars and new plastic engines can cost $200-$300 apiece. New plastic cars run from $5 to $30 apiece. Some older items are much less valuable; others are worth a great deal to collectors. Condition makes a tremendous difference in value, of course. Assembled kits can be worth more than the original price of the kit if they are well done, or they can be almost worthless if poorly done. You really need to have someone who knows what they are doing examine the trains before the kids get hold of them. A local hobby shop (especially one that specializes in model railroading) might be able to identify someone to appraise the equipment.
Several of these posts mention old envelopes or old letters. Depending on just how old we are talking about, some of these may have valuable stamps on them. The chances of anything postmarked after 1950 or so being valuable are very small, but the farther back you go, the better the chances are that a stamp is worth something. If you have old envelopes with stamps on them, DO NOT try to remove the stamps from the envelopes. Do not tear off the stamp’s corner of the envelope, either. Some older stamps are more valuable on the original envelope. Let someone who knows what he is doing see what you have.
And of course the letters themselves might be a priceless find for the family historian.
[Great Depression hijack]
I have a friend whose parents grew up during the Great Depression and had lots of furniture and glassware and dishes that would be antiques to die for today. Unfortunately their families associated these items with the lean times they lived through and got rid of all of it when they could afford newer things. So now all they have is ugly modern plastic junk!
[/hijack]
Look for old pulp magazines. $75-$100 a pop is common.
If my advice earns you $500 or more, I’ll take 1 copy of Weird Tales as my fee. 