My wife has at least 15 Rubbermaid containers of pictures she has taken over the years. She has tried to give some to friends and family and very few people are really interested in them Her and her brother are the end of her family branch so there is no one to really pass these when her time comes. We also have a number of boxes of stuff her mother has passed along. Again, no one is really interested in this stuff. She has listed much of this stuff in our will. I have already made my plan for much of this stuff if she goes first. I won’t say just in the miniscule chance she sees this post.
Now, see, those last are pieces I’d be interested in if I were anywhere close-by and had a way of transporting them and getting them into my house.
I think my sister is taking them, but she doesn’t really have a place to put them.
My dad didn’t get anything. I think his sister took it all because their mom lived with her, and it was her “payment.” My mom’s parents were dirt poor immigrants, and they didn’t have much at all. The only thing I have is a Seth Thomas kitchen clock (an early alarm version!) that my grandfather bought second hand in 1903. I like the look of it. It fits on my mantel.
I found an almost exact duplicate:
You might consider sending them to be scanned. At least then they won’t take up much space, and you could share them with anyone who might be interested without having to drop containers worth of photos on them.
FCM - You might want to see if the local refugee resettlement program or homeless resettlement wants the stuff. For people with nothing and no money, they don’t worry too much about style.
StG
Or thrift stores. It wouldn’t work for people with no money, but people with not much money it could be great for.
I doubt such people would want her Waterford china… 
We’ll just let the estate sale folks deal with it all. It’s what they do.
ROTFLMAO
In the family tontine I guess you would say I am the winner. My parents and brother are dead, there are 4 cousins, 2 of whom the family in general are estranged from [Don’t you just love in family politics] and 2 of whom I retain pretty limited contact [generally notices of people dropping dead. Sigh.]
So we have assorted family heirlooms [we have been here since Mayflower and Niew Amsterdam on my Dad’s side, and a German Anabaptist family that ran to Old Amsterdam and shared the boat over with a bunch of Dutch and kept heading west when the neighbors got too close. However Mom’s Amish side of the family is more in old family recipes because they shunned her] Mom was also an antique dealer in art glass and assorted antique furniture [honestly, what the hell am I going to do with 14 freaking marble topped tables] and mrAru and I discussed it, and we are picking out a few items [a really nice Stickley chair, and roll topped desk that were my great grandfathers, a lovely black marble topped telephone stand and a couple Tiffany lamps we are fond of, and a handful of assorted other antiques.] One auction later and no more dust collectors and a bit of money in the bank. I will be keeping probably 1 banker box of assorted holiday decorations for decorating around the holidays. [duh =) ]
I have no real plan do burden anybody with leftover relics, we have no kids just assorted nephews and nieces, mrAru’s side of the family, and we plan on telling them they can sell it all off. We are slowly converting our 5000 odd collection of books into electronic books as the vast majority of them are out of print, and I can not see us finding a managed care facility that will let us have a couple rooms to use as a library =) We plan on having a couple tablets, phones, and a shared laptop or 2 laptops in our room as our entertainment and communication with the outside world - we figure on picking out 1 huge hard drives worth of the DVDs and all our MP2s, and calling it good.
[to be honest, after losing pretty much everything I owned clothingwise in the house fire, every stitch I own can fit into a large MOLLE pack and sea bag. I have 5 pair of shoes - 1 dressy pair of mary janes, a fancy pair of sneakers, a pair of black sneakers, a pair of coyote combat boots and black combat boots. I might have a pair of crocs somewhere also. The shoes fill half a seabag.
I actually know 3 different people that are doing the camper life - one of whom was on a Bujold mailing list and was updating us as she sort of scurried around running away from a hurricane. I personally see no problem with that as a retirement lifestyle - the only issue is having a mailing address of convenience as an official address to register said camper and receive mail at.
I have my great however many grandfather’s complete set of formal crap - place settings for 16 - fine china, baccarat crystal, sterling silver flatware, and so forth. I will never ever in a million years use it - obviously it is all going to auction [actually i have 3 sets of sterling flatware, one was going to be my sisters, one my brothers and one mine … sigh]
Are you me? LOL.
And that is exactly how that light midcentury stuff became so valuable … people tossing that “Scandanavian garbage that isn’t comfortable” or “that horrible Victorian hulk of a sideboard”
Both my parents and my in-laws are still living so we haven’t had to deal with any unwanted heirlooms to any significant degree.
Yet.
My in-laws are packrats bordering on hoarders. Actually, they are hoarders. They don’t hoard trash – literal garbage – but they hoard junk, crap, and stuff. All of it cheap shit from WalMart or Kmart, kitschy stuff that they think was"cute" so they picked it up on a whim. Stuffed animals. Plastic kitchen gadgets. Cheap motel “artwork.” And on and on and on. Their home is filled to the ceiling with this kind of stuff. When they pass I know my wife and her sisters will not want to throw any of it out (“too painful”) but will not want to keep it. So… I really don’t know what will happen. They had two pieces of art – German-made tapestries – that they gave to us already and that we’ve had professionally restored and hung. That was only thing that my wife was actually interested in that I’m aware of.
My FIL has a leather jacket that has embroidered on the back “I’m going to heaven because I’ve been to hell” with the South Vietnam flag. He’s a Vietnam combat vet. I wouldnt mind having that jacket but it’ll probably go to one of his grandsons.
My parents have some art that I want. My wife and I collect art and they know I want one particular piece they have. Everything else they have… I really don’t care. I’m not big on things and stuff and would rather have money in the bank than things in my house. So much of what they have will probably go to my brother or my kids (or his kids, if he has any by then).
When my grandparents passed we got some of their art, for which I am very grateful. We also received a few odds and ends (dishes, some books) that ended up being donated or given to people who could use them more than we could.
My brother’s wife’s great-aunt (I think. A very old woman my brother had never met) was rapidly declining physically and mentally. She was present for a family party where she was the matriarch. Again, my brother had never met the woman and barely understood her relationship to his wife.
So, enough background. The woman had brought various keepsakes with her to hand out to her favorites. This person got a broach. This little girl got a ring. It was a sweet, touching affair.
At some point she caught my brother’s attention and waved him over. She began talking about how much he meant to her and how much she loved him. Again, they’d never met. She reached into her pile-o’-stuff and pulled out a big box, struggling with the weight. She told my brother that she knew he always wanted this and it made her happy to see his joy.
The box contained a doll in a nun’s outfit. Turns out it was porcelain, really well made, a collectors item worth a good bit of money. My brother thanked her and took it home with him.
Later that year my brother was at our house for a xmas dinner party. He re-gifted the doll to me, telling the backstory and adding that he was afraid it might be cursed. The next xmas I re-gifted it to my sister, telling the backstory again and adding that we had kept her in the attic and periodically heard her banging around up there.
The next xmas my sister wanted to re-gift the doll but couldn’t find her. The family still discusses the disappearing nun doll. The year I gave it to my sister she got very drunk and forgot to take the doll with her when she left. I hid it away, not even telling my gf. My silence has been absolute until today.
Surely she will turn up again when she’s least expected!
I wish Stephen King read this thread…
Then either start parceling them out to the new curators or making them pay the rent on the storage space. I would imagine the objections would evaporate pretty quickly.
I had a discussion about IKEA furniture the other day with someone who said it was junk that won’t last. I pointed out it lasts long enough and the myth of buying “good” furniture that you can pass down to your children is pretty well dead. When I pointed out that not one piece of the furniture my parents had is in either my brother’s or my house* he admitted he was the same.
*The sideboard did go to my brother’s sister-in-law. It still looks out of place when I visit her.
The coffee table in my brother’s family room is one I bought new from IKEA around 1991, so it’s about thirty years old. There are some slight issues with the finish but it’s certainly survived nicely.
Talk to your local or state historical society (or the society in the location(s) where the pictures were taken, if that’s not where you live now). They may or may not be interested, but many will gladly accept pictures of “how people lived” even in recent decades, especially if the pictures are at least sort of identified as to who, where, when.
To all of the Dopers who are dreading having to re-home old furniture, china, silverware, etc., how about calling up local theaters and seeing if they would like these? Maybe they could use these items when putting on plays?
A couple of years ago I accomplished one of my “wait until I retire” tasks. I went through all the photographs (snapshots, really) I’ve had from the last 30 or 40 years. Boxes of them. Maybe 7 or 8 shoebox-sized boxes? And they were jammed full.
I think I kept less than ten. Photos, that is. All the rest went in the trash/recycle.
This reminds me. Does anyone else watch old movies or TV shows and want to reach through the screen and grab some of the items used as set decoration? Only me?
Ymmv. I have two side tables from my great aunt, a sideboard from my grandmother, a couch and two really nice dressers from my aunt, a coffee table and a bed from my mother, and probably some other stuff.
My brother has my grandfather’s desk. My nephew has my mom’s kitchen table and chairs. My sister is taking most of the “worthless” nice furniture. My sister and brother argued over who would get the small arm chairs. (Modern furniture is huge. These were small when furniture was typically smaller. They are plenty big enough to hold normal-sized people and don’t dominate the room.)
I have some nice custom furniture that no one else is going to want, but that’s because it was designed to exactly fit a space in my house, and it will just look odd in some other place. But i really enjoy my natural cherry pieces, and they look nice where they are.
For old furniture, I put it on the Craigslist free section and it usually is gone in a day.