Beatty Asked September 1, 2025
Downsize dilemma depression.
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The 'Downsize' move already done. M was clear & practical with what to take to her new room in AL. (Very grateful for that).It has fallen on the next gen to deal with the family home & contents. Younger Sis a great help when in town, making boxes of keepsakes for all sibs. (Grateful for that too). I have Estate Cleaner quotes. They will clear then clean but need the personal items out first.I am stuck here. Stuck is better than sinking I know.. but I need to move from Overwhelmed to Organised. What to do with all the peronal stuff? The letters, papers, photos, slides, books with inscriptions.. My own downsize plans are on hold.. How to take action?
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It's not an easy job and can be quite an emotional one. Glad you have some ideas now. Always, whatever your choices, look after yourself.
"If I don't change anything - nothing will change" Who said that??
I have stared turning the ideas given here into a practical resource. A mega list - to break this beast down into manageable checkboxes!
I have also found a professional organiser. I think this could be very valuable. Be the sweet spot between doing it all myself (low cost but drowning slowly) & outsourcing it all ($$$ but a fast rescue). The DOING myself has potential for me to get better at sorting. My Big Picture aim is apply this to my own downsize too.
Thank you
🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗🤗
There are bookstores that will buy used books. (if they have no value they will either return them to you or they will recycle for you)
If your library has a book sale to raise money for the library they might be willing to take them as a money raiser.
Letters, papers and the like you might want to box up and some winter evening when noting is on TV you can pick a stack and go through them. (the down side to this is...this has been my plan and 13 years later I still have boxes in my basement that I need to go through but I have made headway this summer..yeah!)
Photos and slides...if they are important you could bring them to one of the places that will put them all on a disc or flash drive so you can all see them. (I have boxes of photos from my husband and his family and I have no idea who these people are and his nieces would not know either. So they sit in a box and I will let my daughter sort it out when I am dead!) Your town historical society may have some interest if they show events and important people and places
I was brutal with letters, papers and such.
I saved my grandma's Medicare card (from when Medicare started) and her address book.
I took loads of stuff to Goodwill and put much stuff out in front of the house for folks to take. That felt good.
I found a lot of emotions surfacing as I went through mother's things. I think it is part of coming to terms with the changes, the loss. Pictures of my uncles, all now gone, that I hadn't seen for years, a letter to mother from her best friend - she just kept the one, It didn't seem remarkable to me, but obviously meant something to her. Writings, I guess a type of journaling, during difficult times of her life and more...Some were revealing and better gone with her.
It's a "put on your big girl panties" type of this and just get 'er done. And look after yourself in the process. Plan some treats for yourself. It's hard work.
I had a wobble last night & told my DH I just couldn't do this. He said "Well it just won't get done then. The house will stay as it is, semi-cleared".
That's almost a tempting idea.. to let it become a ruin & the garden take over.
To bed early. Get some GOOD sleep. Then revive to fight the fight again, armed with the wise advice of you fine people 🤗
I hear you about your own downsize being on hold. ( We were dealing with my in laws ) . Happened to me too , and now we have a seller’s market by me . We have been stuck a couple of years .
When I cleaned out my parents house ( with no help from all 4 sibs ) . I went room by room , got rid of the trash first .
I made a box for each sibling for the framed photos of them and their kids , plus they each wanted one other keepsake . The albums and important papers I took home . Purged the rest of the house . Had cleaners come in . Staged the house for selling . Once there was a buyer under contract , had an auction company come and take the rest of the furniture .
I waited to go through the photo albums and the paperwork . Kept them at my house .
I did save some things I thought my mother would ask for while she was in AL. I had like 4 boxes . Every once in a while I would bring a box for her to go through when she asked. Then she stopped asking where all her stuff went . I trashed it after she died .
He was RIGHT. I now have my own life torn down out of albums, repetitive stuff like 100s of pictures of trips to Italy and Paris thrown and the important ones neatly stored in plastic. It is still a lot.
And when I go my daughter will look at them once or twice in her life and then SHE will go and no one will care.
Americans and our stuff. Stuff-R-Us and storage companies make a bundle on knowing that. Humans are like all animals. Acquisitive.
THROW ALL YOU CAN. You will miss something once or twice in your life. Don't stop downsizing your own stuff. The less STUFF around me the more I like it now, and I miss none of it. All the little Christmas tree houses from the 40s? It delights me to think someone is enjoying them as they increase in value. I had BEEN there and I had DONE that.
My daughter loved clothing and has a lot of vintage stuff and currently newly retired is doing her own downsizing. But the piles of clothing she goes through having even forgot about so many pieces, are hard for her. She keeps thinking the same thing all hoarders are heard to say on TV programs. "That is worth money". Yeah? Show me someone willing to pay. "That is so beautiful". Yes, it is. Pass it on to someone who will wear it.
This is tough. And only Americans have SOOOOO MUCH that they carry it with them in storage containers as though headed to some potlatch where they will burn it to show their wealth. Good luck, B. Thinking of you.
I disagree about the very old photos and family artifacts. I have old portraits in my house. One from the Civil War era of a relative who was a colonel in the Union Army. It's gorgeous and he was too. We know his story and the stories of all the very old pictures and the younger generation of the family after me is very interested in these old pictures and the artifacts that come with them.
Of course we all have to sort through the snapshots and old Polaroids from back in the day and you can't save everything. So we save the ones that professional pictures like wedding portraits or family portraits.
In my house, my Mom's basement and my deceased Aunts' FL home we are storing my husband's great-grandparents' collection of photos (both sides), his grandparents' photos (both sides), his parents' photos, our family photos, and boxes and boxes of slides and photo albums from my 2 Aunts. There are many oversized beautiful antique portraits that are not easily scanned. I only have so much wall space to frame and display them.
No other relative gives a rip about these photos and I have a natural tendancy to curate and preserve. I get so overwhelmed with the thought of going through them that I mostly just pretend they don't exist. I just started going through my MIL's since hers seems the "easiest" so far. They are all in those giant photo albums from the 70s.
I agree with Goddatter to go through and only keep pics with people in them, and it needs to be people you recognize and can name. In going through my MIL's pics, if my hubs or I didn't recognize a person in a photo, we didn't keep it. After this first level of sorting, I went through a second time and picked out one pic that was the Best of Show in each group, and preferably one where everyone looked their best and I could name the date, occasion, location, etc.
You can also choose to digitize the best of the best and create a family web page. My cousin put a lot of work into TribalPages many years ago. She has stopped doing it due to memory impairment but the page is still there and I still have the login. I can add info if I want. There is a free version with a limit of 50 pictures, then $3 p/mo for 1000 pics and $4 p/m for 10K pics. It's family tree stuff, so you can do other things in this site.
"For ease of use + sharing:
Google Photos is usually the most practical free solution.
For better organization + photography-focused families:
Flickr works well.
For private family groups with mixed tech comfort:
Facebook private group is simplest.
👉 A helpful strategy is to pick one “main” platform (like Google Photos or Flickr) for the full-resolution archive, and then share selected albums on social media or group chats for ease of family access."
Source: ChatGPT5
I found easily 90% of family photos and slides could be trashed. Scenery pics of trips with no people in them? Very low sentimental value. The ones with people are the keepers.
I grew up with pet names like Ansco, “Illy” (for Iford), TriX (the 3 legged cat) & “Deek” (DK72).
fwiw LegacyBox does slide to digital conversions. It’s a different price point from their stuff a box of prints / tear sheets for 1 low price. All goes to cloud storage although you can get a flash drive as well if you want to go old school tactile style.
I trashed a lot. None other of the various levels of offspring wanted any of it. There were things that were very important to mother, but not to anyone else. I kept some things till she passed and then trashed most of that. Realistically what use is it to anyone now?
I'm glad you have some help and that the move to AL is doing well.
Keep us updated! 😊