A Queasy Selling of the Family Heirlooms

I'm reminded of Swedish death cleaning [1]. If I don't die outright, I'll try to do as much for my daughters.

When my mother died she left behind a rather large collection of collectable dolls — not my thing, and not heirlooms for sure. (They represented I think the first time she finally had disposable income — at like age 60 or so. So she collected these things she liked.)

Regardless, I wasn't about to dump them at a local Goodwill. They meant something to her and I was quite sure she would want them to go to someone who would appreciate them as much as she did — to another doll collector I thought.

The thought of the tediousness of selling them though had me packing them up and storing them first in a storage unit in Morgan Hill for several years — even after I had moved with the wife back to the Midwaste.

A trip out to California in the van-turned-RV though and I finally brought them to Nebraska — first in my garage, then down into the basement. But again they sat for years.

This year I made a kind of resolution to "live more lightly" and so began the process of putting each doll up on eBay.

I came to learn about the dolls as I created little descriptions for the listings, tried to answer the odd question that a potential bidder had. In fact in the end I ended up keeping one of the dolls in memory of my mother. (One doll for some reason I kept coming back to look at — had a hard time imagining selling it because it was so ... stunning.) My daughters also each picked out a doll to keep in memory of grandma.

Yeah, heirlooms, etc. can be a kind of burden. As a parent myself now I make a point to let my girls know that they can toss anything of mine they wish to once I shrug off this mortal coil.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_death_cleaning

We should think of mementos as going through a distillation process or something. For the original owner, the set exists as a reminder of their whole younger life—throwing parties with overcomplicated settings and finally getting into the middle class.

For the person that inherited it, they exist as a memento of childhood. Their parents big parties were only a small part. Keep a couple little pieces.

These also might have been, in some sense, insurance policies. Some of your ancestors might even have been second-class citizens in your country. The silverware might have been their best way of storing any value at all. I don’t know if I believe in spirits. But if you end up selling it off for what seems to you to be a trivial sum: that’s because your family was successful enough to not end up needing it. I think the spirits are proud.

I inherited a family cabin. It's nice - I'm there right now. Rural WI, fiber connection, fireplace, on a lake, etc but god does it suck up the money. I'm looking forward to giving it to someone in the next generation but I have to wait until one of them has a job that can afford the upkeep.

I am from a European country with a long… very long history, some of the family heirlooms date back to Byzantium. I don’t live in that country anymore, and I live in terror of inheriting them… I could give them to a museum, yet asides from that feeling like a betrayal, I know it will mostly just sit in a box till it rots away. Maybe making it out to an exhibit once per 30 years. I feel like we are all losing interest in our past.

It's because life moves faster now.

My wife started collecting fine tea sets ever since her mother-in-law asked her how she prepares tea. ("I'll show you how we prepare tea...") My wife does not drink tea. I do.

I say don't be a slave to possessions. Enjoy what you have, and what you inherit. If they become a burden, let someone else enjoy them. Life is too short to worry about things.

Time to make myself another cup.

Jerry Seinfeld, on the life of things we buy:

1. buy treadmill from Amazon with one click, delivered to your door

2. put it in the living room corner

3. after a while, put it in the garage

4. more time passes, move it to the storage unit

5. take it to the dump

Amazon could do us all a favor, and have one-click send it directly to the dump.

Having gone through this exercise recently, silver is typically only valuable if it’s not plated and then only for the metal. Unless you have some really special pattern that someone else wants, it will be melted down for other uses.

Old China patterns are very hard to sell as well. Younger people have no interest in things which can’t go in a microwave and need to be hand washed.

It could be worse, you could have spent money to store a bunch of furniture or other things you'll never use for a decade, out of a sense of obligation to someone who isn't around anymore to tell you how stupid you're being, and just get rid of it.

I come from poverty relative to the United States and never want to let go of things, electronics having been the hardest to acquire in my childhood. My wife comes from being middle-class America and correctly perceives these fast outdated things as pure carrying cost, worthless in the near future.

A lot of 10 ipads from 2015, e-waste from her employer paying to get rid of them? I greedily ask for it and she indulges me but with a warning that I have six months to find utility.

Funny. I'm the one who played so many strategy games where buildings have carrying cost. Less is more. She is right of course. It's what we do with the thing that matters more than what it is. At the Goodwill Donation Centre when I falter she says "Take a picture and give it away". Good advice.

Silver is anti microbial; eating on silver may well be very beneficial.

Since silver is important in making the front contacts of solar cells, sell that old unused silverware blackening in the drawer and help replace fossil fuels.

Worried what the ghost of granny will think? Ghosts don't exist.