There are certainly people around who want old maps.
In my experience, if time is no problem they can usually be sold- either on a large website for more money or on one of those Box it Up and We Collect for Free sites.
If I just need shot, someone will either collect from our home or pay for postage.
I think last time we had a clear out, only two went to a charity shop and both were bought within a month.
@North East Quine just don’t use the maps for going for a walk. Mr Cats is a mapophile and some of his OS maps date from the 50s or earlier. They are NOT reliable for countryside walks. Woods appear or disappear. Housing springs up, bridges fall down, places become nature reserves and are no longer drained (=bogs). But he loves them and even yesterday was using one to direct me as we drove.
If they're local to the area, would they be of any interest to a local museum?
If any of them are particularly old, or interesting, frame them or hang them as posters.
When David was working as a tutor in the theological college in St. John's, he rescued a bag full of rather elderly maps abandoned on top of a wheelie-bin, and put them up on the walls leading up to the top floor of our house, where they hid some very dodgy and badly-hung wallpaper.
I am trying to avoid any of Dad's stuff becoming my stuff. Some of Dad's stuff is clearly stuff he took from his late parents' home in the 1990s, and I suspect that it hadn't been looked at since. I can relate to this since I have a couple of boxes which came from my late grandparents house and which I am just storing for the sake of it.
Our home is cluttered enough as it is, and I don't want to tip our house over the edge into completely unmanageable. None of those maps are crossing my threshold.
I am actually quite anxious about this. Dad was good at taking and labelling photographs, as am I. He has two shelves of photo albums which ultimately are going to end up here. But I've already got two shelves of my own photo albums, and no spare shelves. But that is a problem for another day.
The sort of stuff Dad accumulated - photos, newspaper cuttings, booklets - is the same as the sort of stuff I accumulate. But Dad also accumulated cameras, phones, cables, torches etc. There are six cameras in the box neatly labelled "old cameras" The earliest is my late grandfather's box brownie. The next one or maybe two may also have been my grandparents'. And then Dad has added his own obsolete cameras to the box. The cameras are also a problem for another day.
@Cathscats I hear you. Yesterday we planned a 9 mile detour en route to visiting my mother to take a photo of my 5 x gt grandparents gravestone, which is in a graveyard surrounding a ruined church. We'd allowed 30 mins to find the kirkyard, and then the stone.
I'd looked up the route on google maps, and checked the location on Streetview. We couldn't find it - I'm sure if we'd had time we would have, but that would have made us late for lunch. We were looking for a clear path on the left hand side of a four mile stretch of road. We spotted what might have been a path waist high in Rosebay willowherb. Since the google street car drove along, the whin and broom by the roadside had grown massively, so that we couldn't see over it to spot the ruins of the church.
The change in the ten or so years since Streetview was filmed and yesterday was considerable.
I agree with LC about selling the cameras, but I'd suggest you take them to either an auctioneer or someone who specialises in that sort of collectible - you'll probably get a better price for them, and they'll be going to people who appreciate them.
Mr Puzzler has so many “ collectibles”, all of which must have some value to the right person. Ideally he would start now to find homes for them, rather than leaving me the task if he dies first. The stash includes items from his Dad and grandparents, and from my Dad. We have been in this ( smaller) house for seven years, and much of his stuff is in the loft, untouched, and now we struggle to get up there. When it is Covid-safe to do so, I plan to get two strong teenage grandchildren to help.
If anyone wants an idea what is saleable and how much for, have a look at ebay and click the box 'sold items' - this will help for cameras. You might enjoy (well, I do) selling things and giving the money to a charity your Dad supported - knowing his stuff is not wasted, which is the sort of thing my Dad would approve of. It's a little hassle, but not a lot really, and the charity thing can be motivating where the small amount of money you'll generate for many items might not be, if you were going to just spend it in Tesco.
(You might want to cultivate a Tesco or suchlike for packing materials - I have accumulated a big stash, which at the moment is a bigger pile than the pile of things I must get around to listing on ebay!).
I buy old maps, and use them (1970s OS 1:50,000 in pink covers, usually). New road schemes can throw you, but it's normally possible to work out what has changed. Our Oxfam sells them too, as well as yellow ones (1:25,000) and pre-metric one-inch series. Even old leaflets from 'days out' places get a second chance in the maps box.
At a comfortable emotional distance from your issues, I wonder if there’s a charity shop within reach which your Dad would have been pleased to support.
Could you take a whole lot of stuff which neither you nor your Mum or brother actually want, and give it to them? I suspect that the effort of individually selling items might just be overwhelming, unless you actually need the money. If there is anything of real value, it’s likely that they will pick it out, and it will end up benefitting a good cause which your Dad would be glad to have supported.
That doesn’t help with things which have only sentimental value (such as old photos), but it might reduce the scale of the challenge.
I was trying to convince my college-aged son to help with the decluttering by appropriating and ebaying various bits of crap, and using the $ for tuition etc. He's not enthused, but another university student might be. Which gets you help...
Mum and I sorted through all Dad's clothes at a rapid pace, bagged them up and put them to a charity shop.
The stuff we're now going through is very slow going - papers, gadgets, booklets, more papers, photos. Dad had a master diary - he kept a diary and at the end of every year he transferred the highlights to his year-a-day Master Diary. I hadn't realised that there were back up papers to the diaries; newspaper cuttings, theatre programmes etc. It's making me look at my own study through fresh eyes - my kids will be in this situation with my stuff one day. I am very much my father's daughter.
The maps are going to a charity shop at the first opportunity.
I should add, Mum has wanted none of it so far. She says that she has a perfectly good memory to recall holidays etc and doesn't need ticket stubs, brochures or any other ephemera, apart from photographs.
My mum was quite happy to get things gone after Dad died, and did not want to be involved. Taking his clothes to the charity shop was the first thing she requested. Checking the pockets, I found a wrapped barley sugar sweet in each coat pocket,” just to keep him going”.
@North East Quine - wouldn't his master diary and back up documents be of interest to historians? Those trying to record the ephemera of modern life for posterity?
I wasn't suggesting anything other than the local charity shop for maps. The charity should be able to sell them, and if it's Oxfam, they value their goods on arrival and stuff that will raise more money than will sell at a local shop goes into their central stores and is offered online - see here. They also sell cameras - link. Should you want to support Oxfam, that is.
@Curiosity killed Mum says that she doesn't think Dad would want his diaries published or read by "strangers" in any way. Dad wrote some autobiographical essays "for the family" and I suggested sending copies to my cousins, his nieces, but Mum thinks Dad intended them purely for his children and grandchildren. I'll revisit this with Mum in a few months time. I'd like to word process them to include photographs, and so I'll do that for my own interest, then speak to Mum again about letting people read them. One of his essays was about his war-time childhood, which I think would be of interest to a lot of people.
I won't be getting rid of any of his diaries, everything that's gone for recycling so far wouldn't, I think, be of much interest to posterity.
My mum was quite happy to get things gone after Dad died, and did not want to be involved. Taking his clothes to the charity shop was the first thing she requested. Checking the pockets, I found a wrapped barley sugar sweet in each coat pocket,” just to keep him going”.
Phew @North East Quine , seems like you are well on your way with deciding about lots of your dad’s things.
It can be hard to think though, when confronted with Parental Stuff . All the more do when (as you say) we find ourselves in danger of going down the same path! Yikes!
I have completely chickened out and bought a glass fronted china cabinet and into all that goes parental diaries/ books not for casual reading / and some keepsakes that I just canNot let go yet. Glass fronted so nothing is hidden away. One cabinet , so I have to be ruthless.
Here , we are still walking out to the garage and gazing at the Space now the camping stuff has gone!
My father-in-law died over a year ago, and he was definitely a hoarder. Fortunately my mother-in-law is much more amenable to clearing stuff out. I'm trying to tackle a bit each time we visit. Next time the plan is to clear out the inside of a sideboard (we cleared the top last time) so we can get rid of it. Then we can move the armchairs so you no longer have to squeeze between them and the cooker to get through to the dining table. It will be quite a big house with less stuff in it!
I'm not sure whether my emotional distance, as an in-law, helps. I think the house has been like that for so long that my husband and his sister can't imagine it any other way. Or maybe it's just that I enjoy poking around in other people's cupboards!
Having been going through my Dad's stuff, all neatly packed and labelled, but with a LOT of "stuff" crammed into a wardrobe with an ingenuity that suggests he would have been good at Tetris, and then having visited a relative who has lived through lockdown in discomfort, because she is hemmed in by stuff belonging to her late father which she can't bear to throw away, I am girding my loins to declutter my own "stuff."
I am going to adapt William Morris' adage Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful to include or which will not cause your children's hearts to sink if they have to deal with it after you are gone
Now that charities are prepared to do bulk uplifts I am inching towards assembling a consignment. So far this has meant putting cardboard boxes in the hall for books, and half-filling another with bric-a-brac.
The problem is, as we all know, that nothing can be disposed of unilaterally. So I put 3 mugs in the box, Mr F puts them back in the cupboard...
I have spent two hours sorting out the stuff under my bed. It was all tidy in the sense that everything was in plastic underbed boxes, but it's been "out of sight, out of mind" for a long time. Despite being in a lidded plastic box the emergency spare set of bedding was too dusty to have been of use in an emergency. I've given away five items on the village free give-away Facebook page, I've found a couple of things I thought were lost, the North East Man has claimed some books and is trying to find space in his bookcase, the bedding is in the wash, and a bagful of paper is in the recycling.
@North East Quine - I am happy to offer advice on the cameras (sadly, most old cameras are worth very little, but you never know, funny things do happen) - I might even take one, given that I collect them.
No kids to sort out after me... God help the nieces and nephews! Of late a lot of stuff has come my way from Mum - much of stuff that I didn't even know existed, but is still "Mine" - like my old school reports! Where the hell has it been?
I was thinking about some of the stuff I need to declutter. I have an ornament that Dad gave Mum. I don't even like it, but I was keeping it because I know how much she did - which seems kind of weird. Now I realise that I can declutter it to one of the 3 Charity Op Shops just down the road once our lockdown is over. I think it will be the Sallies, because although she argued with then when they wanted her to sign a petition against the Homosexual Law Reform Act in 1986, they have since apologised for that. Besides which they would have shared views on helping people out of poverty.
When stuck in a decluttering rut, I also use that method @Huia .
It helps me to think about the person who originally owned the item ….if they would approve…..
Yes, it was a very liberating moment when I realised that just because a hideous ornament had once been the apple of the Dowager's eye, I didn't have to keep it <phew> In fact, the thought that I 'ought' to keep something (other than paperwork, obviously!) was a trigger to ditch it!
My mother died almost five years ago, and my young sister gave houseroom to almost all her books - the piles are breathtaking. Nothing has moved for ages, apart from occasional surreptitious disappearances that occur when I am there, but we eventually persuaded her that Oxfam in Aberdeen would help her. However, her daughter found a £10 note in one book that was about to be sent out, and the operation stopped dead. What if there are more? Everything will have to be checked and so far, that process hasn't begun. My sister will find she has a larger house than she thought when this stuff goes.
I am an only child with three sets of aunts and uncles who had no children. I found keeping one thing from each was enough and for one aunt named Rosealee I simply remember her by planting her favorite rose in my garden. When we moved a planted a new one.
Well, we had a fun weekend smashing up a sideboard and taking it to the tip. Also decluttered my m-i-l's kitchen cupboards. Our oldest find was some coffee dated 2001. Yes, 20 years out of date!
A decluttering question - I have a painting of a local scene which was painted by my first boyfriend and given to me by him approx 37 years ago. It's a good, amateur, painting. The North East Man has always said he'd be happy to have it hanging in the house, but I've kept it in a cupboard because it's quite large, good, but not brilliant, and I wouldn't want to explain to visitors who painted it. (Although we have two watercolours by a friend up, and no-one has ever asked who painted them, so there's not much risk of that.)
I like it, but I don't love it. What to do with it? I know where my first boyfriend lives but we are not in contact - we had mutual friends up to about 15 years ago, but I don't think we do now. Charity shop? Or offer it back to him? He has a wife and three adult children, any one of whom might be pleased to have it - or not. I have no idea.
In despair. Ranting here to avoid ranting at home.
Our heating broke down, and our plumber said that it would take a week to get the necessary new valve. He did a temporary fix which resulted in lukewarm radiators, with no guarantee the temporary fix would last till the new valve appeared.
We had one plug-in heater in an accessible cupboard and a second in the loft. Getting the one from the loft was going to be a two-person effort, one person on either side of the loft hatch.
So my husband unilaterally decided that instead of trying to retrieve the second heater (too much effort) he would go out and buy more. He bought six more.
So far, we've only used three. Three are still in their boxes. I want to take them back for a refund. My husband thinks they will come in handy in the future.
The snag is - we have nowhere to store them, except in the loft, at which point they will no longer be "handy" they will be in the same position as our existing second heater, deemed "inaccessible" by my husband.
Stuff just seems to flow into the house, and we have nowhere to put it.
I am trying to get stuff to flow out of my house by collecting up small items that may appeal as Christmas gifts and donating them to the local op shops. I am carefully ignoring some of the lovely stuff that other people have donated with the same intent,
You have my sympathies, NEQ.
Mr Puzzler has just bought a new Roberts radio. It is great quality, but we have three already. My fault for commenting how handy one would be if we had no power. In fact they are just about the only thing that can run on batteries, so at least we would have music even if we had no heat or means of cooking.
Don’t get me started on what is in the loft.
At least I have been able to put some Christmas decorations up as the box never made it back into the loft last year.
In despair. Ranting here to avoid ranting at home.
Our heating broke down, and our plumber said that it would take a week to get the necessary new valve. He did a temporary fix which resulted in lukewarm radiators, with no guarantee the temporary fix would last till the new valve appeared.
We had one plug-in heater in an accessible cupboard and a second in the loft. Getting the one from the loft was going to be a two-person effort, one person on either side of the loft hatch.
So my husband unilaterally decided that instead of trying to retrieve the second heater (too much effort) he would go out and buy more. He bought six more.
So far, we've only used three. Three are still in their boxes. I want to take them back for a refund. My husband thinks they will come in handy in the future.
The snag is - we have nowhere to store them, except in the loft, at which point they will no longer be "handy" they will be in the same position as our existing second heater, deemed "inaccessible" by my husband.
Stuff just seems to flow into the house, and we have nowhere to put it.
All my sympathies ever.
I discovered a third set of uninstalled smoke alarms today. (Does the house have any installed? Why no, now that you ask. We've only been here twenty-two years.)
I think I'm going to get a ladder and start "installing" them tomorrow. My husband will see that, yell at me to get down, and then...
The plumber is due this morning with the new valve. If that works and our heating becomes fully operational again, the unopened heaters go back for a refund tomorrow.
Then we just have to store the three we've been using. The loon might take one as back up for his flat.
You might enjoy (well, I do) selling things and giving the money to a charity your Dad supported - knowing his stuff is not wasted, which is the sort of thing my Dad would approve of.
Or charity shops might take it, if you just want it off your hands, but don't want the bother of selling it. Our church has a charity shop, which does from time to time get donations of things of collectible value, which get diverted and sold on ebay rather than on the shelves like the "ordinary" stuff.
I've just got my eyes back (glasses! hurray!) after two months, and am deciding today what to tackle first. We have probably (small) truckloads of stuff that needs to go to charity--I think local Afghan refugees are going to do well out of this, esp. kitchenware. I am attempting to behave myself whenever Mr. Lamb re-enters the main house from the current scourge of hoarderliness, the Green Room--clutching a random item in his hands and saying, with wide eyes: "Look at this, I haven't seen it for years!" and enthusiastically planning what to do with this gem of prehistory.
Mr Alba bought two phones into our marriage. I bought just the one and for years we have managed perfectly well with three handsets for a landline phone .
This year we bought an extra one so I could take a call, if outside. By August one of my beloved’s original phones broke, so he bought two more. Then other.
Of these six phones, two only work if both are in a phone socket and plugged in. However All phones are apparently not only required but Necessary.
I thought we were decluttering
So
I could scream and want to go back to morse code.
I am attempting to behave myself whenever Mr. Lamb re-enters the main house from the current scourge of hoarderliness, the Green Room--clutching a random item in his hands and saying, with wide eyes: "Look at this, I haven't seen it for years!" and enthusiastically planning what to do with this gem of prehistory.
I love those moments. I come across some old object I haven't seen for donkey's years, and reminisce happily with it for a while - then probably potter about with it and ask the kids if they know what it is. And, yes, then think about whether I can bring it back in to use somehow, or whether it's headed for another decade or two in a box on a shelf.
Comments
In my experience, if time is no problem they can usually be sold- either on a large website for more money or on one of those Box it Up and We Collect for Free sites.
If I just need shot, someone will either collect from our home or pay for postage.
I think last time we had a clear out, only two went to a charity shop and both were bought within a month.
If any of them are particularly old, or interesting, frame them or hang them as posters.
When David was working as a tutor in the theological college in St. John's, he rescued a bag full of rather elderly maps abandoned on top of a wheelie-bin, and put them up on the walls leading up to the top floor of our house, where they hid some very dodgy and badly-hung wallpaper.
Our home is cluttered enough as it is, and I don't want to tip our house over the edge into completely unmanageable. None of those maps are crossing my threshold.
I am actually quite anxious about this. Dad was good at taking and labelling photographs, as am I. He has two shelves of photo albums which ultimately are going to end up here. But I've already got two shelves of my own photo albums, and no spare shelves. But that is a problem for another day.
The sort of stuff Dad accumulated - photos, newspaper cuttings, booklets - is the same as the sort of stuff I accumulate. But Dad also accumulated cameras, phones, cables, torches etc. There are six cameras in the box neatly labelled "old cameras" The earliest is my late grandfather's box brownie. The next one or maybe two may also have been my grandparents'. And then Dad has added his own obsolete cameras to the box. The cameras are also a problem for another day.
I'd looked up the route on google maps, and checked the location on Streetview. We couldn't find it - I'm sure if we'd had time we would have, but that would have made us late for lunch. We were looking for a clear path on the left hand side of a four mile stretch of road. We spotted what might have been a path waist high in Rosebay willowherb. Since the google street car drove along, the whin and broom by the roadside had grown massively, so that we couldn't see over it to spot the ruins of the church.
The change in the ten or so years since Streetview was filmed and yesterday was considerable.
(You might want to cultivate a Tesco or suchlike for packing materials - I have accumulated a big stash, which at the moment is a bigger pile than the pile of things I must get around to listing on ebay!).
I buy old maps, and use them (1970s OS 1:50,000 in pink covers, usually). New road schemes can throw you, but it's normally possible to work out what has changed. Our Oxfam sells them too, as well as yellow ones (1:25,000) and pre-metric one-inch series. Even old leaflets from 'days out' places get a second chance in the maps box.
At a comfortable emotional distance from your issues, I wonder if there’s a charity shop within reach which your Dad would have been pleased to support.
Could you take a whole lot of stuff which neither you nor your Mum or brother actually want, and give it to them? I suspect that the effort of individually selling items might just be overwhelming, unless you actually need the money. If there is anything of real value, it’s likely that they will pick it out, and it will end up benefitting a good cause which your Dad would be glad to have supported.
That doesn’t help with things which have only sentimental value (such as old photos), but it might reduce the scale of the challenge.
The stuff we're now going through is very slow going - papers, gadgets, booklets, more papers, photos. Dad had a master diary - he kept a diary and at the end of every year he transferred the highlights to his year-a-day Master Diary. I hadn't realised that there were back up papers to the diaries; newspaper cuttings, theatre programmes etc. It's making me look at my own study through fresh eyes - my kids will be in this situation with my stuff one day. I am very much my father's daughter.
The maps are going to a charity shop at the first opportunity.
I wasn't suggesting anything other than the local charity shop for maps. The charity should be able to sell them, and if it's Oxfam, they value their goods on arrival and stuff that will raise more money than will sell at a local shop goes into their central stores and is offered online - see here. They also sell cameras - link. Should you want to support Oxfam, that is.
I won't be getting rid of any of his diaries, everything that's gone for recycling so far wouldn't, I think, be of much interest to posterity.
I'm planning to give the maps to Oxfam.
Hurrah!
Now for one of ‘those’ drawers, I have several.
((Hug))
It can be hard to think though, when confronted with Parental Stuff . All the more do when (as you say) we find ourselves in danger of going down the same path! Yikes!
I have completely chickened out and bought a glass fronted china cabinet and into all that goes parental diaries/ books not for casual reading / and some keepsakes that I just canNot let go yet. Glass fronted so nothing is hidden away. One cabinet , so I have to be ruthless.
Here , we are still walking out to the garage and gazing at the Space now the camping stuff has gone!
I'm not sure whether my emotional distance, as an in-law, helps. I think the house has been like that for so long that my husband and his sister can't imagine it any other way. Or maybe it's just that I enjoy poking around in other people's cupboards!
I am going to adapt William Morris' adage Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful to include or which will not cause your children's hearts to sink if they have to deal with it after you are gone
The problem is, as we all know, that nothing can be disposed of unilaterally. So I put 3 mugs in the box, Mr F puts them back in the cupboard...
And I'm up-to-date with the Archers.
No kids to sort out after me... God help the nieces and nephews! Of late a lot of stuff has come my way from Mum - much of stuff that I didn't even know existed, but is still "Mine" - like my old school reports! Where the hell has it been?
It helps me to think about the person who originally owned the item ….if they would approve…..
I like it, but I don't love it. What to do with it? I know where my first boyfriend lives but we are not in contact - we had mutual friends up to about 15 years ago, but I don't think we do now. Charity shop? Or offer it back to him? He has a wife and three adult children, any one of whom might be pleased to have it - or not. I have no idea.
It can’t hurt to ask.
Our heating broke down, and our plumber said that it would take a week to get the necessary new valve. He did a temporary fix which resulted in lukewarm radiators, with no guarantee the temporary fix would last till the new valve appeared.
We had one plug-in heater in an accessible cupboard and a second in the loft. Getting the one from the loft was going to be a two-person effort, one person on either side of the loft hatch.
So my husband unilaterally decided that instead of trying to retrieve the second heater (too much effort) he would go out and buy more. He bought six more.
So far, we've only used three. Three are still in their boxes. I want to take them back for a refund. My husband thinks they will come in handy in the future.
The snag is - we have nowhere to store them, except in the loft, at which point they will no longer be "handy" they will be in the same position as our existing second heater, deemed "inaccessible" by my husband.
Stuff just seems to flow into the house, and we have nowhere to put it.
Mr Puzzler has just bought a new Roberts radio. It is great quality, but we have three already. My fault for commenting how handy one would be if we had no power. In fact they are just about the only thing that can run on batteries, so at least we would have music even if we had no heat or means of cooking.
Don’t get me started on what is in the loft.
At least I have been able to put some Christmas decorations up as the box never made it back into the loft last year.
All my sympathies ever.
I discovered a third set of uninstalled smoke alarms today. (Does the house have any installed? Why no, now that you ask. We've only been here twenty-two years.)
I think I'm going to get a ladder and start "installing" them tomorrow. My husband will see that, yell at me to get down, and then...
Then we just have to store the three we've been using. The loon might take one as back up for his flat.
Or charity shops might take it, if you just want it off your hands, but don't want the bother of selling it. Our church has a charity shop, which does from time to time get donations of things of collectible value, which get diverted and sold on ebay rather than on the shelves like the "ordinary" stuff.
This year we bought an extra one so I could take a call, if outside. By August one of my beloved’s original phones broke, so he bought two more. Then other.
Of these six phones, two only work if both are in a phone socket and plugged in. However All phones are apparently not only required but Necessary.
I thought we were decluttering
So
I could scream and want to go back to morse code.
I love those moments. I come across some old object I haven't seen for donkey's years, and reminisce happily with it for a while - then probably potter about with it and ask the kids if they know what it is. And, yes, then think about whether I can bring it back in to use somehow, or whether it's headed for another decade or two in a box on a shelf.