> You can ask your kids what those gems are. My dad ask me this a few months ago. I brought up some knick knacks he had in his office when I was growing up. I'm not sure if he still has them or not, but if he does, if he ever goes through his hoard, he'll know to send those my way instead of getting rid of them.
He can't give them to you if he threw it away. Also, he can ask that question to you because your choices and preferences are, to a large extent, set.
The same stuff, that my child would throw away without hesitation few years ago, is now "precious memories" and not to be disturbed. The emotional value of things doesn't follow much logic and has massive volatility until adulthood.
I mean I totally understand that me keeping bunch of stuff isn't a guarantee that they will find what they value at that point of time. Maybe the lego-shaped eraser would be the most interesting piece of stationary they will remember; doesn't mean I can hoard every piece of stationary. Digital stuff is different though - my SSD doesn't bulge just because I'm putting more files holding snippets of life on it.
My dad has kept a lot of stuff. If he kept what I mentioned, I don’t know. But I do hope he goes through his stuff and pairs down before he passes, and if he does, I’m glad he asked. But you’re right, they the kids need to be grown before that question becomes valuable.
I’ve known several people who had to go through their parent’s entire lifetime of accumulated stuff and it was quite the job. Dumpsters were rented. It was a big burden to leave the kids.
Digital stuff will also be a lot to go through. My dad has hundreds of thousands of photos, backed up in triplicate. I was helping him clean the basement once and found 5 1/4 inch floppy disks labeled “backup” from the 80s. He’s kept all digital files. Many of them are locked into various proprietary apps as well. So I’ll likely need to spend months going through it all, while everything is still working, to see what is worth saving, and migrating it into a format I can manage. It will be a massive project, on top of the physical stuff. I’m hoping I can talk the rest of the family into an estate sale for the physical stuff, but the digital stuff is arguably the bigger job, with no way to outsource it.
There is also the question of corruption, or simply being able to read older files. I grabbed some documents I had saved on his computer back in high school about 15 years later. I had saved them as rtf files at the time so they would be more portable. I tried off and on for a week or two to read them in more modern times and it was a no-go. I could get sections, but not the whole thing. I don’t know if the rtf standard changed or the files were simply corrupt, but they were basically trash. I’m sure I’ll run into a lot of that as well.
Why will you "need" to go through it at all? Unless you were looking for something specifically important, like you knew there must be a will in there somewhere but had no idea where, why can't you just pitch the lot of it?
I have a single page document with the information I think somebody would need from my electronic files if I died. It's printed and stored in my fire safe. My next of kin has a copy of the key.
I don't really expect they'll do, nor care to do, anything with my digital files.
> I’ve known several people who had to go through their parent’s entire lifetime of accumulated stuff and it was quite the job. Dumpsters were rented. It was a big burden to leave the kids.
I agree that it's a lot of work but disagree that it's a burden - I see it as an opportunity to reflect on your and your parents' lives. And it is only a lot of work if you actually care about preserving the important parts, throwing stuff out wholesale is much easier.
He can't give them to you if he threw it away. Also, he can ask that question to you because your choices and preferences are, to a large extent, set.
The same stuff, that my child would throw away without hesitation few years ago, is now "precious memories" and not to be disturbed. The emotional value of things doesn't follow much logic and has massive volatility until adulthood.
I mean I totally understand that me keeping bunch of stuff isn't a guarantee that they will find what they value at that point of time. Maybe the lego-shaped eraser would be the most interesting piece of stationary they will remember; doesn't mean I can hoard every piece of stationary. Digital stuff is different though - my SSD doesn't bulge just because I'm putting more files holding snippets of life on it.