Millennials are about to be crushed by all the junk their parents accumulated.

Every time Dale Sperling’s mother pops by for her weekly visit, she brings with her a possession she wants to pass on. To Sperling, the drop-offs make it feel as if her mom is “dumping her house into my house.” The most recent offload attempt was a collection of silver platters, which Sperling declined.

“Who has time to use silver? You have to actually polish it,” she told me. “I’m like, ‘Mom, I would really love to take it, but what am I going to do with it?’ So she’s dejected. She puts it back in her car.”

Sperling’s conundrum is familiar to many people with parents facing down their golden years: After they’ve acquired things for decades, eventually, those things have to go. As the saying goes, you can’t take it with you. Many millennials, Gen Xers, and Gen Zers are now facing the question of what to do with their parents’ and grandparents’ possessions as their loved ones downsize or die. Some boomers are even still managing the process with their parents. The process can be arduous, overwhelming, and painful. It’s tough to look your mom in the eye and tell her that you don’t want her prized wedding china or that giant brown hutch she keeps it in. For that matter, nobody else wants it, either.

Much has been made of the impending “great wealth transfer” as baby boomers and the Silent Generation pass on a combined $84.4 trillion in wealth to younger generations. Getting less attention is the “great stuff transfer,” where everybody has to decipher what to do with the older generations’ things.

  • @grysbok
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    123 days ago

    No worries. “No contact” is the only path to a peaceful existence with my mom. I’ve tried working with her and it doesn’t take. Latest example of why I should just lose her number which happened just now: I missed a text from her then got one less than 24 hours later saying

    “Sorry to bother you. I thought you might give a fuck but I see i was mistaken. I won’t bother you again.”

    That’s gross dude on a dating site behavior. Tbh, if it was important she could have called or emailed.

    Anyways, I’m going to treat her like a gross date and lose her number. This isn’t the first time she’s threatened to go no-contact and I see no reason to protest.

      • @grysbok
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        22 days ago

        Thanks. She’s blocked everywhere I can think of. I’m going to be a messy feelings blob today and that’s ok. I have coffee and chocolate.

        It took 107 years of low-contact to go to no-contact. I’m not making this choice lightly. She just sucks that much.

        And I’m going to steal “duderino”. It’s mine now.