Last Friday, I drove my mom up to Aunt Theresa's tudor home in Westchester. There are about a hundred chores that need to happen before she can put the house on the market.
While we were waiting for the plumber to inspect the downstairs bathroom, we cleaned. We needed to attack the four bedrooms that hadn't been touched in about five years, when Aunt Theresa became too ill to walk upstairs. Aunt Theresa was never the best of housekeepers when she was healthy, but the house really crumbled during the last five years before her death.
We trudged upstairs to attack the mess. We pulled everything out of one room and made piles. The clothes for the Salvation Army went on the bed in one room, books went in the hallway, the bathroom became the zone for stuff that should go straight to the dumpster.
The closets were stuffed to the brim with all sorts of random things. She had bolts and bolts of fabric and yarn and thread for sewing. One dresser was stuffed with little scraps of cloth leftover from past sewing projects. Some of the scraps were only one inch wide. What was she planning on doing with that? I made a five foot stack of fabric that had never been taken out of the packaging.
I found another 80 boxes of fabric in the attic. They had been moldering in the attic so long that I'm sure that it all has to be put in the dumpster.
We found vases from the Met Museum store, postcards from museum visits, weekly church bulletins, twenty years of Gourmet magazines, photo albums, junk jewelry, address books, antique lace, her father's naturalization papers, worn out shoes, and faded photos of godchildren.
I also found reams of yellow notebooks of love letters that were never sent. She had dated an Italian doctor sometime in her late sixties. He ended up dumping her for a younger woman, but he must not have ended things cleanly. For months, she wrote him five page letters every day confiding in him about her day to day thoughts and memories from her childhood, but she never put them in the mail. One letter ended with the line, " I haven't heard from you in months. Where are you?"
In the afternoon, an estate sale lady, Estelle, arrived to inspect the stuff. She said she needed to see $10,000 worth of stuff before she would agree to run the sale. The china was too common. The silver was plated. The piano was an off brand. There were a couple of nice pieces of furniture, but not enough. She said no to the sale.
She was a chatty sort of woman who could have stayed for several hours, if we weren't in a rush to get back to NJ to pick up Ian from the bus. She did have some interesting gossip about the antique business.
Estelle said that antiques were out of style. Martha Stewart and Ralph Lauren had made old things cool a few years ago, but they weren't doing magazine spreads of old tea cups anymore. The Internet also killed the china market. The replacement dish companies had flooded the market with dishware. The only old furniture that had a chance of bringing in good money was mid-century modern pieces. Aunt Theresa's bedroom furniture was from the 40's and was Italian provincial – not cool. It was only worth $300.
There has been some family drama about what to do with the contents of this house. We need to settle this estate very quickly, because my parents loaned Aunt Theresa money against the estate. They took out a second mortgage on their own house to keep Aunt Theresa in her home and out of the nursing home. We need to sell the house quickly to get my parents' money back. My sister and father want to just dump the entire contents of the house in a dumpster and walk away. My mom and I just can't stand to throw things away that someone could use. We are working on a middle ground.
This experience has caused me to look at my own stuff in a new light. My prize possessions will be someone else's headache in the future. They will be dumpster filler.
As we emptied the rooms, the charm of the home peaked through the dust. We could see the floor. The light streamed through the windows. With a coat of paint and new tile in the bathrooms, it wasn't hard to imagine a new family laughing, giving a baby a bath in the tub, making pasta in the kitchen. The series of windows in the front bedroom would make fabulous reading nook, once the broken wheelchairs and medical supplies were gone. We piled the unsent love letters in the bathroom that became the dumpster zone, and the bad karma left.
Apt. 11d 
I do like to save actual furniture and dishes and things, but I still remember an uncle who was mad at me for weeks for just throwing away some grandma’s stuff without looking through it. Specifically, I threw away the box of receipts and warranty information for the appliances of a house that was sold a dozen years before.
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“…I still remember an uncle who was mad at me for weeks for just throwing away some grandma’s stuff without looking through it.”
You have to be very careful about old lady houses, depending on the old lady. My husband’s Warsaw grandma had money and a few gold coins (dollars, zlotys, American gold and Russian gold) stashed throughout her small apartment, which was probably one of the reasons she was unwilling to have household help during her final years. It was very finicky work finding it all after she died. If MH’s grandma were like my husband’s grandma, she could easily have had money hidden in the receipt box. Of course, as it happened, a lot of the cash that my husband’s grandma had hidden was in defunct zlotys (it’s been a while now, but as I recall, they were either unusable or had lost almost all value due to inflation).
The only time I saw my husband’s Warsaw grandma (which was a couple years before she died), she was trying to press items from her vast crystal and china collection on us. My husband and I were, at the time, on a month-long ramble through Central Europe by train, with many struggles getting a huge cheap suitcase with bad wheels on and off trains and pulling it through train stations. I suppose that china and crystal are exactly the sort of stuff that it’s unlikely that the younger generation will want. (However, I do confess having much warmer and more acquisitive feelings about a set of hand-painted china that my great-grandma bought off of a friend who was running away from her husband and needed money quickly. Theoretically, I also have some interest in my great-great-grandma’s silver, but I recognize that I am probably not the best custodian for an item requiring such regular care.)
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This is really beautifully written; it would make a great piece for a magazine with a sidebar about which types of things are valuable and options for selling/disposing of things.
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My sister and father want to just dump the entire contents of the house in a dumpster and walk away. My mom and I just can’t stand to throw things away that someone could use. We are working on a middle ground.
The middle ground, I guess, would be donations to Purple Heart or Goodwill or some such place that will send a truck out to haul it away. No money, but maybe something “someone can use.”
I am coming to the conclusion that there is really no moral value in “recycling,” per se. Rather, the moral value is in using the recycled product rather than buying new. It seems that more and more “trash” is being created by poor people, who pick up things at yard sales and thrift shops and use them until they are worthless, while the recycling rich buy everything new, but never throw anything away.
In this context, I guess the point is that if no one wants it and you throw it away, that’s okay. When I was helping with a canned food drive, lots of people donated expired cans. The reasoning being, I guess, that if they donated the cans and the food bank threw it away, then the final sin would rest on them, not the donor. If the estate people and Goodwill don’t think it is worthwhile to haul the stuff away, then just chuck it.
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Rather, the moral value is in using the recycled product rather than buying new.
I made a folding workbench with all used parts (except the screws). Mostly, it was an old dorm closet and bedframe.
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Yes, what JennG said (though with no actual knowledge about the trade). There’s information, sentiment, beauty.
Actually, is there a book proposal in there? There’s a story, there’s a message, about stuff, about women. And, if there is a book, is an article the way to start?
I’ve saw a memorable article (NY Times?) by someone who tracked down an estate sale post card in a book.
(Your had me thinking about my stuff, too. My problem is that I don’t care if people throw it all away when I’m not here. But, I don’t know that they’d know that. I guess I can tell them. Probably still wouldn’t help).
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thanks, guys. Maybe there is an article in there. hmmmm. I have one coming out in the Atlantic tomorrow. It’s a very straight and boring student loan article. It might be fun to develop this one next.
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I’d vote to keep the furniture. Fashions change. At one time, mid-century modern was out of style. Buy whatever’s not hot right now, i.e., buy low, sell high. At present, the acquisition cost for this furniture is zip. You have two sons who will need to furnish apartments in the not too distant future. No need to pay IKEA for a bedroom set.
I must be reverting to my genetic roots. “Keep that! You never know when you’ll need it!”
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“I’d vote to keep the furniture. Fashions change.”
True, but furniture is so LARGE.
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It doesn’t rot. Save it for 100 years, and your descendants will thank you.
Or curse you, but you’ll be beyond caring at that point.
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I just want to add I love these posts about aunt Theresa. I think they are very moving for a few reasons: your family’s devotion to her, the stuff issue and also the generational differences. I think it would somehow make a great article. it is really making me think about my stuff a lot. I have one or two things from my grandparents’ house and I treasure them…but you only need one or two things!
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As you’ve probably seen me moan on FB, I have dealt with this issue for two family members, and a third is headed my way. I’ve sold stuff to Replacements Ltd, and sold stuff via Craigslist. Sometimes it’s worth the trouble, and sometimes it’s not. There are always moments when I wish I could build a pyre in the front yard and give the departed a roaring Viking send-off.
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Sorry for the typos.
Don’t keep the furniture (or anything else) unless you know it to be useful or believe it is beautiful.
But, take photos.
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“There are always moments when I wish I could build a pyre in the front yard and give the departed a roaring Viking send-off.”
That sounds fantastic. I guess that’s my ancestral memory coming through. Wouldn’t work on metal or ceramics, though.
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Wouldn’t work on metal or ceramics, though.
That’s the advantage of putting the stuff is a boat, lighting the boat on fire, and then pushing it out in the water. As far as you know, it all burns up.
One dresser was stuffed with little scraps of cloth leftover from past sewing projects. Some of the scraps were only one inch wide. What was she planning on doing with that?
Patches, maybe, or for fixing rips. But more generally, when you do a lot of stuff with sowing or whatever, it’s very easy to think of ways you might want this little bit of something, to fix a problem here, decorate something there, and so on. Sometimes it’s wishful thinking, but the craftsman often knows what might come in handy.
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“it’s been a while now, but as I recall, [the zlotys] were either unusable or had lost almost all value due to inflation”
Both. In the mid-90s, the Polish government lopped four zeroes off the currency and brought in the new zloty (PLN). The two kinds were both in circulation the summer I lived there, and it was confusing as heck. People spoke in thousands, so if someone said “15,” you’d give them a 20,000 note and get an 0.5 PLN coin back. Ack. Anyway, after a certain period the old notes were strictly historical interest and could no longer be traded in.
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I also want to put a pitch in for the “ethnic” value of the story–Italian-American from the Bronx–as well as the never married angle. Those themes resonate with me. And, I think “what does one do, and how do we deal with an estate of a loved one” also is an interesting angle. I agree with other reads: looks like there is a “longer” story in this post!
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We looked at a house last year (been house-hunting, taking our time) that was a house like Aunt Theresa’s. I couldn’t drag myself away from the basement in particular, where so much of the clutter had been stored to show the house. It’s my inner material culture-ist. I especially love old books and magazines.
I showed the pics you posted to my mom (just got back from a visit to NY), and she thought the furniture in them was very nice. She said one piece looked like birds-eye maple and thought that might be very sellable.
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This slays me…especially the unsent love letters.
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The unsent love letters are making me tear up. Somehow, I wish you would bury them or burn them with some dried sage or poppy seeds.
This topic has come up repeatedly among friends and colleagues in the past month. I suppose as people who lived through the depression age and die, this is going to become an issue for more and more of us. So yes, an article would be timely.
I predict Getting Rid of Stuff will be a big topic.
My uncle does this funny thing where anything he finds in his closets that is old or family related, is forwarded to me “for the kids”. Real leather leiderhosen. Crocheted Christmas decorations, figurines from my great grandmother’s dresser, things that may be coasters but who can tell? I kept a lot of it in a closet for ages, but finally tossed it all.
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“especially the unsent love letters”
Me too. I wonder if everyone has broken someone’s heart, or had theirs broken.
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