Oh, man. It's getting to that time where I can see downsizing my parents' stuff as being on the horizon.
There's so much of it that is unremarkable. It fits into their house+garage, but it consumes a great abundance of space. There are, IIRC, 3 generations of China, each with its own China cabinet -- and I wouldn't know which dead person they once belonged to anyway. Tools. Furniture. Stacks of rough-sawn hardwood lumber, and logs.
I have enough furniture. I don't need rolling toolboxes full of mixed hoarded socketry, unsorted wrenches, and rusty tap-and-die sets in inch-standard sizes. The bench-mounted belt sander my dad made from scrap 40 years ago is cool and all, but it's been over 25 years since he's bothered to have it set up, it was always finicky to get running true, I've never suffered for a lack of using it.
If I ever move stuff like the tools and the lumber, I want it to be the very last time it ever happens -- and then I never want to see it again.
The China is particularly daunting: For as long as that stuff has been sitting around on display at their house, it has been both too nice to ever use and also too good to get rid of. (If the time ever comes that I want my own set of nice China for whatever reason I might, then: It's easy to get.)
I will work hard to dissuade anyone else from taking anything that is physically big, just on the basis that nobody needs that kind of curse in their life.
But I fear that others will find that a lot of this stuff will be too emotionally-precious to depart with. It will then be "temporarily" relegated to a storage facility until enough years go by that someone finally gets sick of paying the bill and it all gets sold to the highest bidder, thrown away, or donated anyway.
That expensive trip through purgatory seems like such a waste of money and effort.
Exactly.
My parents found one familiar, in particular, that wanted a huge (and extremely nice) china cabinet. After moving that, they put claim on more and more things. Great! Some neighbors also helped take things off their hands -- it would be great if they had a use for it, but I half think they were just taking things to be nice and help my parents; either to sell or dispose of later, which is also kind.
I'm so thankful that, in addition to making the smart move to move to a retirement home before it's too late, they also did the hard work of downsizing rather than leaving my sister and I with this chore a dozen years in the future. None of us have ever had a storage unit, although my parents just took on a "temporary"; I think 8x10ft unit. I know 2 things in there are for me, I just couldn't haul them in the one car trip I had time for. (and, unrelated, I'm living in a small apartment during construction on my house, so I don't have the space for a few more months).
I _do_ suspect that temporary storage unit will become relatively permanent, which is honestly probably the least-bad solution here. On the other hand, my parents are frugal and have lots of time on their hands, and probably opposed to storage units on principle, so we'll see :)