Parents with dementia, how dealing with that has gone.

[Sigarms]

Christmas, 3 electric candles that go in the front windows, that no one can see from the road anyways, and one ceramic Christmas tree that my mom made a long time ago.

Halloween, nothing

Season's decorations we've got down LOL

I remember my parents house. The attic was FULL of decorations. We do have a artificial Christmas tree in the basement closet that takes up a lot of space though.

 

[Sigarms]

ArlyA

Feel your pain.

Reality is any decent, well adjusted adult is going to end up taking care of their parents "stuff" sooner or later. Sadder yet is it's generally the not so well adjusted adult siblings who get to watch and complain LOL

Generally, it's NEVER easy.

Honestly, taking care of my aunts stuff as the executor of her estate was probably more time consuming and stressful than my fathers stuff even though my aunt didn't have much (the issue was dealing with the family without a well written out will on her personal stuff on "who gets it").

That said, when all is said and done, being able to take care of your parents and loved ones stuff after they've left this world makes up for all the headaches in dealing with their stuff IMO, knowing that you made their life hopefully easier.

We only pray that our son will do the same for us, but right now at age 20, we're kind of scratching our heads on that one LOL

 

[California]

Distributing Mom's stuff went better than I expected when I called everyone to a distribution party, and designated (unhelpful) Sis to act like an auctioneer. Everyone knew that each person was entitled to equal shares. Sis did a great job keeping the shares equal as people argued over stuff. (She's an elementary school teacher, that probably helped. )

Net result we got rid of most of it in that one meeting. What remained that no one wanted went on Craigslist (big stuff) or to Goodwill. I took three 4x8 trailer loads of books to the city library. I learned that due to copyright law they can't put donated free books in circulation, rather these went in the annual Friends Of The Library book sale as fundraisers.

One surprise, Mom had bought an historic, classic 1890s Steinway upright piano from the church when they moved to a new building and put in a new piano. We assumed it would be worth at least what she had bought it for, a few decades ago. Nope, no offers at all. Finally a piano dealer in Los Angeles offered to come up (400+ miles) to get it if we would take $600. Sold! His comparables on his website were in the $Thousands so we assume he made some money on this one.

 

[WinterDeere]

I've helped move quite a few pianos, and that's been my experience... you're often lucky if you can give it away. It's not that there's no real value there, in fact some of them have been very nice, it's just that supply always seems higher than demand.

When we moved into the current house, I found the bronze soundboard of a piano in the burn pile outback. I guess the prior owners found themselves in a similar situation, with too-little time to deal with it!

 

[dstig1]

The topic of getting rid of pianos has popped up a lot the past several years as it is becoming near impossible to get rid of anything that isn't a top of the line Steinway or similar. Nobody wants them anymore and you can't even give them away.

 

[Runner]

I had to get rid of a very nice Yamaha baby grand from my Mom's house and practically had to give it away. Got a fairly decent offer over the phone from a dealer, then after he came and looked at it lowered his price because he said it smelled bad because the house was musty and they can't get the smell out of old pianos.

I think it was a BS excuse, but let him have it because it needed to go. She also had an old Hammond M100 organ that I couldn't give away. It went with the house....

 

[tradosaurus]

My wife is at the point that her mother will be moving into a nice retirement community (her father passed 15 yrs ago). Will need to start getting rid of all the stuff collected over the last 50 yrs in a 2 story house. Personally I would just rent a big roll-off box and just start chunking stuff. Except for crystal glass ware she bought from Europe, nothing is worth trying to sell. The house is located in a nice part of Arlington, Tx so should sell fast.

 

[newbury]

My MIL, who passed a year ago, had an ancient broken player piano in her garage, which effectively made her 2 car garage a 1 car, 1 freezer, 1 piano garage. It's been there covered up since ~ 1982.
We are still "cleaning out" her house and it's IN THE WAY.
We could REALLY use the space for staging stuff to load in vehicles but my BIL and wife seem apprehensive to move it. And it took about 5 burly guys to put it in the garage originally.
Does anybody know how easy are they to break up? The house has a STEEP (~20% grade) driveway about 50' long that ends in the street (~18' wide) with nothing on the other side of the street except a 10' high dirt bank. I'd like to get it started rolling down the drive and then pick up the pieces. I'd suggest to them blocking off the street of course.

 

[kenmbz]

My MIL, who passed a year ago, had an ancient broken player piano in her garage, which effectively made her 2 car garage a 1 car, 1 freezer, 1 piano garage. It's been there covered up since ~ 1982.
We are still "cleaning out" her house and it's IN THE WAY.
We could REALLY use the space for staging stuff to load in vehicles but my BIL and wife seem apprehensive to move it. And it took about 5 burly guys to put it in the garage originally.
Does anybody know how easy are they to break up? The house has a STEEP (~20% grade) driveway about 50' long that ends in the street (~18' wide) with nothing on the other side of the street except a 10' high dirt bank. I'd like to get it started rolling down the drive and then pick up the pieces. I'd suggest to them blocking off the street of course.

I was at steinway as a kid, lots of glue ups and screws.
If you're going to break it up, how will you get the parts to the dump?

You'll need to look an assess whether it can be disassembled or sawzalled to make it a reasonable task.

I like to put stuff by the curb to see of it disappears though, maybe with a notice in the local papers/facebook etc. ? Got rid of some insulation and my sons old dresser that way. Bet that thing is heavy though...

 

[WinterDeere]

There is apparently no sound on earth like a piano dropped onto pavement from a sling, dangling from a crane two or three stories up. Yeah, I knew someone who'd done this.