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.”
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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.
Huh? You decide how you are treated. Even by your parents. I’ve had good conversations with my now aged and forgetful parents where I clarify how I want to be spoken to.
Edit not all boomers have Alzheimer’s
Sorry, that’s not how it works with people stuck in a loop. It’s a very American problem, if you aren’t American. Not sure if it was the leaded gas, or what, but some people are just broken. The person you want to change needs to want to, and be able to change for your idealism to work. Otherwise you’re just building a delusion around a fixed point to fit your viewpoint while that person remains unchanged.
It’s terribly sad, really.
That’s just ageism, with a nationalist(?) crust.
There’s lots of dumb boomers. There’s lots of Alzheimeric boomers. There’s lots of smart, respectful boomers.
Suggesting an entire generation can’t respect others is junk.
Imagine you subbed out “boomer” for a race. It’d be insane to say.
Tons of boomers have completely accepted 2024, their children, and their choices. You apparently just haven’t met them.
As good for me as going no contact would be, I love my parents and do alot to keep them in my life.
A terrible weakness. If only I could be strong like you.
I never said go no contact, edit or that I was some model of strength. I’m just an adult.
Just consistently assert the standards you as an adult want to live in.
I can’t even get folks to use the right pronouns for me. I have no hope of getting my narcissistic mother to treat me as an adult. She won’t even believe me about basic facts about, for example, about how my city’s public transit works (facts listed on a very large poster she could read herself) if they contradict her first impressions.
