Young people don't want their parents' stuff

[politicat]

68. My great-grandmother didn't want my g'g-gm's stuff; gm didn't want her mother's stuff.

My smother doesn't want my gm's stuff. I don't want my mother's stuff. I don't think this is new; it's just happening frequently because we have lots of Boomers realizing it all at once.

The biggest difference? My great-great grandmother and great-grandmother lived in the same town, often in neighboring houses on the same farm. When g'g'gm died, g'gm held a barn sale a year later, kept a little, and shoved what didn't sell into one of the outbuildings. My g-grandfather did the same with his parents' stuff. My grandmother followed the practice when her parents died. They lived in a world with fewer material goods per capita anyway, when material goods took up a greater percentage of income, so storing stuff made sense, and storage then was almost no cost -- the cost to put up a wooden building on the property. Storage now is expensive.

Smother moved thousands of miles away when in her 20s (and took me). So the farmhouse full of several generations' accumulation is really full, and material goods have gotten cheaper and more plentiful, as well as more functional. (I'll take my digital scale over my grandmother's funky, non-standard measuring spoons any day.) And there's the ick factor -- great-grandmother's china had lead paint, for example. The cost of transport alone outweighs most of the value, and the costs of time to sort it is even more expensive. My Boomer generation smother also has established her own hoards -- um, collections. I left home at 16 and have absolutely established my own life without my natal family.

It's not that I'm a minimalist, or that smother is a minimalist -- she's not. It's that after establishing an independent life, taking on the material artifacts of another independent life comes with more decisions, when we're often already at a decision budget deficit, and costs far more in terms of lost wages -- working women can't just take the time off, and women are still expected to deal with the material relics of their elders -- and travel and storage.