{"id":793824,"date":"2026-10-06T15:02:13","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T15:02:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/793824\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T15:02:13","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T15:02:13","slug":"how-to-deal-with-inherited-items-you-never-wanted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/793824\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Deal With Inherited Items You Never Wanted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ekerdt offered a few suggestions for adult children facing an advancing wall of family possessions.<\/p>\n

1. Ask for the story, even if you don\u2019t want the thing<\/p>\n

If your parents are determined to give you something, ask them why it matters. Where did it come from? Who owned it first? What do they remember when they look at it?<\/p>\n

Ekerdt said this would likely \u201cgratify them enormously.\u201d By listening, you\u2019re allowing them to pass along the meaning<\/a>, which may be what they wanted to give you in the first place. You can photograph the object, write down its history or record your parents talking about it. The beer stein may eventually disappear, but the story doesn\u2019t have to<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It occurred to me that Kelly\u2019s father had spent years assembling this collection and that I\u2019d responded to it largely as a storage problem. I knew what the steins looked like, but almost nothing about why he\u2019d wanted them. Before deciding their fate, I could at least give him the pleasure of remembering out loud.<\/p>\n

2. Offer to help with the decision, not just accept the cargo<\/p>\n

Parents may push possessions toward their children because the alternatives are exhausting. Every object that comes into the house must eventually leave it<\/a>, and somebody has to decide whether it should be sold, donated, recycled or thrown away<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can help by finding an auction house, donating what\u2019s usable<\/a> or bringing in someone to run an estate sale. You\u2019ll also need to break the news that nobody is getting rich off those commemorative plates.<\/p>\n

It can be emotionally exhausting, but it\u2019s more useful than relocating everything to another storage unit, where the family continues paying rent to avoid making a decision.<\/p>\n

3. Sometimes the kindest response is to \u2018shut up and take it\u2019<\/p>\n

Most decluttering experts warn against letting unwanted possessions cross your threshold. Ekerdt looks at it differently. Once an older parent has begun seriously downsizing, accepting an object can be an act of generosity in itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJust shut up and take it,\u201d he says. \u201cAffirm the giver with open arms. Flip your idea of what a gift should be about. A gift isn\u2019t always in the giving; sometimes it\u2019s in the receiving. That is what you\u2019re doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

You are relieving your parents of an immediate problem and allowing them to feel that something important has been safely placed. You don\u2019t have to announce that you hate the lamp, have no room for the china or intend to investigate whether 100 beer steins can be donated to community theater companies staging The Sound of Music.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Somewhere on a lovely upstate farm, all our unwanted family heirlooms are running free together.<\/p>\n

Ryan Johnson <\/p>\n

Is there a rainbow bridge for your parents\u2019 old stuff?<\/p>\n

Your parents may already suspect that the object won\u2019t remain in the family forever. Once it\u2019s out of their house, says Ekerdt, they are not likely to remain fixated on its fate. If you can find another use for it, or another home, you\u2019ve still helped.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a small, loving deception involved. Taking your parents\u2019 belongings with no intention of keeping them is the estate-planning equivalent of telling your children that the family dog has gone to live on a farm. The fantasy allows us to get through a painful transition without dwelling on what happens next.<\/p>\n

Perhaps our parents need a farm for their possessions. Somewhere in the imagination, all the old lamps are glowing, the clocks are keeping perfect time and the beer steins are being raised nightly by grateful men in lederhosen.<\/p>\n

The next time we visit Florida, I\u2019m going to ask Kelly\u2019s father to take me through the collection. I want to know which stein came first, which one is his favorite and whether any of them have a story more interesting than \u201cI found it at a flea market.\u201d Then Kelly and I can choose a few to keep. Our son may want one someday, though I can\u2019t confirm this, and all available evidence suggests otherwise.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll load the boxes into the car, thank Kelly\u2019s father and let him watch his collection leave with the family. For a while, at least, the steins will have found a good home. After that, we will help them find the farm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ekerdt offered a few suggestions for adult children facing an advancing wall of family possessions. 1. Ask for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[84,162320,261341,261337,261335,261348,4176,261347,261343,261344,261336,261339,261338,261340,261345,261342,261346,4174,4175,212263,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-793824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-clutter","tag-cuckoo-clock","tag-dealing-with-family-legacy","tag-family-heirloom","tag-family-mementos","tag-finance","tag-gen-x-inheritance","tag-german-antiques","tag-german-beer-stein","tag-heirloom","tag-how-to-donate-unwanted-possessions","tag-how-to-downsize","tag-junk-removal","tag-lederhosen","tag-old-lamps","tag-parents-possessions-you-dont-need","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-the-sound-of-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}