A LOT of older houses have mold from unnoticed leaks. The difference between you and your neighbors is that you knew about yours. They didn’t, or pretended they didn’t.
Still sucks for resale value. But as you say, it’s good when you’re out the other end and the burden is fully gone.
Bailing out a month ago was the best damned decision I’ve made since my first wife died 2-1/2 years ago. My soon-to-be-ex is a fine person, but she and I together are a recipe for misery. It’s not Punch and Judy. More like Mutt & Jeff in a three-legged race. Awkward to watch, lots of stumbles, and nothing much goes right.
Shame we both leaped before we looked. But we did.
But as I say, it’s good when you’re out the other end and the burden is gone.
I have the feeling that one should move house every 10 years at the most, to force a clearout.
Haven’t managed to always stick to this, what with jobs, kids in school etc.
But we did move to the UK from the US 5 years ago, which got rid of a lot of junk to avoid international moving costs. My wife would insist on shipping box after box of photographs, though.
As I predicted, not one of them has ever been opened since…
I was married for 13 years and have had a couple of live in girlfriends here. Only one was bad with the stuff collection. Admittedly I am alone now and am a fairly extreme minimalist.
I know the thread is a bit old, but I went through the family home sale recently and thought I’d share how I handled it. I didn’t expect it to be so stressful, but it got messy pretty fast. I kept trying to figure out what buyers wanted, made small changes around the house, and kept going back and forward with my brother about what repairs were worth doing. After a while nothing felt straightforward.
I have to comment on this, too. When my mother died, we cleared our everything from her house she had a ton of old photos. Many of people i don’t recognize. (Probably her grandmother, and similar) My brothers insisted those couldn’t be thrown away. My daughter, who lived with us at the time, offered to scan them (something she never for around to doing) so they all ended up at my house. I didn’t expect I’ll ever want to look at them. I don’t expect my brothers will ever ask after them. I’m sure if i tell them I’m throwing them away I’ll get a ton of pushback.
My mom went into assisted living last spring. With close to a $10,000/month rent bill, we had to sell her house so she could use that money for rent. My mom and dad built the house shortly after they got married in 1960. In 1962, we moved in, I was a year old. There was a lot of stuff in that house/basement/garage. My sister and I worked hours and hours for weeks on end. We had a rummage sale and sold quite a bit, and the rest went to a few different thrift shops. We also rented a 10-yard dumpster and filled it to the brim, and then rented a smaller one and filled that one halfway. Our dad died in 1993, and that’s when the last of the updates and repairs to the house stopped. There were a lot of things that had to be fixed. Every time we’d bring it up to mom, she’d say, “it’s good enough for me”. UGH
We would have loved to have kept the house in the family, but it wasn’t to be. We used a great realtor who really helped get us through the whole process. We put the house on the market on a Wednesday morning, and by noon, we had an offer over asking. By Thursday, the realtor said we should stop taking offers on Friday at 2 pm. We met with her at 3 pm on Friday. She had 9 offers for us, all but one way over asking. We chose the one that didn’t ask for an inspection (we would have lost a lot of money if an inspection were required!). It was $25,000 over asking, and it stated that if there were items we couldn’t get rid of, we could leave them. It was the dream come true offer! We only left an air hockey table in the basement and a piano. We spotted a Christmas decoration that had dropped behind the piano. My sister and I tried to move the piano away from the wall .Ha! We couldn’t budge it. So it stayed.
A great young, newly married couple bought it. They fell in love with the house and location. It was hard to say goodbye to that house, but knowing that it will be loved and taken care of again makes me happy.
I ended up with a bunch of unlabeled (and some of them kind of weird) photos from my father’s mother. She’s been dead for maybe 40 years, my father kept them, and when he died 16 years ago, I ended up with them. When I die I expect them to go into the recycling. No-one will care*.
If I were you, I might put out the word to the family “it’s been (5,10,15 whatever) years and no-one has even looked at these photos. In 6 months anyone can have them who wants them, otherwise they will be thrown out.”
*But I can’t yet bring myself to just throw them out. Weird.
When my mother died a couple years ago, she was still living in the house I grew up in. My brother got the house, and my sister and I received a modest inheritance from my mother’s IRA accounts. When she died the house was in poor shape. It is now in even worse shape; my brother and his wife are addicts & alcoholics, on SSDI, and have no money or desire to maintain it.
It was once a nice house. In the 1970s my father built a beautiful rec room in the basement, and now it’s full of trash. It’s sad to see.
I’m so sorry. It would be tough to watch your childhood home fall apart like that especially when it’s being uncared for by a family member. That is sad.
My mom has asked me to help clear out her house, which was my grandmother’s house until she died last year. So, oh my goodness…I’m kind of looking forward to it but it’s a big job and I won’t be able to stay over there for more than a couple of days. Wish me luck!