When their mother passed away last year the children came to town for the funeral. Several people there recommended that they call Estate Services, so what did they do….
They called the garbage company and filled several dumpsters before leaving town for several months (continuing to pay taxes, utilities, and mortgage, while mice moved into the house). They finally sent me an email before they returned and I explained that we would take care of everything that they did not want.
When I met with them the second day they were in town, there was already another full dumpster in front of the house (this one appeared to be full of cardboard). When they told me that they were doing this to “reduce their costs” I explained that I could haul cardboard to the recycling center in town cheaper than they could pay to have a dumpster delivered, pay a charge for every day it was there, pay to have it picked up, and then pay for every pound they had put in it.
They were unaffected by my logic and showed me the several closets full of clothes that they still intended to throw away. To my utter amazement, they took each item off of its hanger (including furs and cool vintage items) before carrying them out to the dumpster. They also threw away all of the jewelry, but left the six empty jewelry boxes. All of the books in the library were discarded because they had the mother’s name in them, (how about an eraser or a black marker if this was a concern). They also proudly told me about all of the unopened boxes from the storage room they had thrown away. These had been moved to the house 30 years ago, and since they were never opened they figured no one needed what was in them!
By the time they were “ready for me to come” all that was left was a chest freezer, six empty jewelry boxes, two old sofas, a beat up piano, several closets full of hangers, and half a load of paint and pesticides in the garage. When I took the chemicals to the hazardous waste section at the landfill, I was talking to the woman at the scale house and told her, in disbelief, that they had even thrown away all of the jewelry. Her response was “Oh yeah, that happens all the time. A couple of years ago I was walking through the tipping area and the whole floor was covered with jewelry. I reached down and picked up a little box, and look what was inside”. At this point she showed me the beautiful antique 18K gold ring that she was wearing!
Later on that day I was talking to a dealer who specializes in vintage clothing and told her about having to haul away all of the empty hangars. Her reply was “I’m not surprised, last fall my grandmother died in Spokane and when we went to the funeral a week after her death, my brother that lives there had already thrown away everything in the house, without ever asking if any family members wanted anything”.
Postscript: So the cycle goes on. Despite my focus on providing a service to reduce the burden on the relatives and to keep usable items from going to the dump, often there is nothing that can be done.