Organizing the Unwanted Inheritance

When a parent or any family member dies, there can be mixed emotions, especially if an inheritance is attached. While we may not have any issues accepting cash, stocks, or real estate, what to do with all the inherited personal possessions can be a challenge for someone who already struggles with organization and clutter. It’s not just some stranger’s stuff: it could be cherished items from mom or dad and things you may have seen in their home for decades. And sometimes, it is just little things; for example, I kept my mother’s driver’s license for a few years.

Dealing with Inheritance

When my mother died, I was uninterested in absorbing her furnishings or artwork. None of it was to my taste. I didn’t need a second set of kitchen appliances or cookware either. Yet I did keep a few symbolic items, such as a four-foot-tall statue of a mother with two daughters, which she kept in her living room. That statue had fallen and cracked in both the 1971 and 1994 Los Angeles earthquakes, and she painstakingly put them back together and painted them over twice. I almost felt it was my duty to hang onto that statue, but I also liked it. I also kept a couple of Japanese dolls from her international doll collection because those were my favorites to look at while growing up.

I have gone to several homes as a Feng Shui consultant and seen how a client struggled to deal with all their parent’s furniture and felt guilty about letting any of their inheritance go. Sometimes siblings will share in the burden of dispersing unwanted inherited items, and sometimes the opposite problem occurs when family members fight over who gets what.

I just have to believe that if your relationship with a loved one who passed on was good, they wouldn’t want you to feel over-taxed with their stuff. They would want you to sell it for what it is worth or just get rid of it in any way that suits you. If your relationship with a loved one who passed on was bad, hanging onto their stuff out of some twisted guilt or loyalty makes no sense.

So, what to do with an entire household inheritance? I first called an estate sales planner to look over everything. She was more embarrassed than I to inform me that my mother’s household furnishings were very ordinary and not expensive enough to sell as an “Estate Sale.” I didn’t get a second opinion in my desire to get the house emptied as soon as possible. I have since passed through a couple of Estate Sales and know that you don’t have to represent a multi-million-dollar property to call it an Estate Sale. In fact, in some instances, an “estate sale” just implies that an entire household is for sale, and it is not an ordinary “garage” sale.

In any case, I knew that setting up a series of Garage Sales would be very time-consuming, given that her home was 30 miles away from me. It made more sense to let someone else handle the situation than to try to sell things individually and haggle with buyers. The estate sales planner who rejected the opportunity to make the sale had a whole following of people who would go to whatever estate sale she was involved with.

These were hard-core antique dealers and high-end shoppers for whom she had a certain standard to maintain. But she told me about a company that would take everything out of the house in one day and pay me $1,500.00. They did that, not even leaving a single paperclip in the place.

There might have been about $50,000 worth of items in the house in replacement value. But in terms of “garage” sale prices, we were looking at just a tiny fraction of that potential return. I had to factor in my time in having several sales of my own, arranging to have some things donated and hauled off, and then the number of months where the house would be not yet ready to rent out. Delayed income from turning it into a rental property motivated me to empty the house immediately.

I had friends come over to pick through everything first. One pal took the microwave and treadmill. Another friend who knits took the mountain of yarn. Her housekeeper wanted the master bedroom set. I kept all of my mother’s jewelry, of course.

But I didn’t have any qualms about selling everything else. It was not a difficult decision for me to make since I had my own house fully furnished. And I knew my mother would not have wanted me to spend money on storage or wring my hands about what to keep. In the afterlife, none of that matters. The house itself was the biggest gift which I was truly grateful for.

When someone has difficulty organizing their possessions, taking on an inheritance can put that person over the edge. And there is no shortage of people who could use these donated or sold items for a bargain. One client of mine moved back into his mother’s house to help her when she was terminally ill, and eight years later, her master bedroom was still preserved as it was while he continued to sleep in a childhood bedroom. Eight years later, it took a contractor friend and me to convince him that it was time to remodel the house, take over the master bedroom, and get rid of all the extra stuff he did not need or really want.

My summary on this topic is that unless you have inherited some very valuable items or things you genuinely love and can make room for, you might give them away or sell them as expediently as possible. Either option will make you happier than turning your home into a warehouse of things that could make you sad to look at or stifle the flow of energy in your space. Nothing is disrespectful about letting go of the parts of your inheritance you don’t want or need, even if you inherited them.

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