"I love my mom a lot. But whenever she visits, she brings at least a few boxes from the attic - also known as the packed-to-the-ceiling hell where every single thing from my childhood is kept. The boxes she brings sometimes include a treasured piece of jewelry or a timeless toy or a long-forgotten photograph, but they also include lots of broken stuff, out-of-date books, and every single worksheet from second grade."
"Yes, she has kept a bag full of plastic Barbie hairbrushes for me for 30 years. I am not alone. Dealing with the junk of your parents is a common complaint in my friend group. Either Boomer parents are ferrying boxes of junk to our houses, or they are struggling to live in their own increasingly crowded homes. And when they pass? We are left to wade through the madness and mess."
""As a millennial set to inherit a baby boomer's junk I can honestly say it's a mental illness," she wrote. "I'm packing the house for a remodel and I just can't believe my mother's attachment to STUFF. It's infuriating. I am by no means a minimalist but I wear and use my things. This process makes me want to have an empty house and three outfits I rotate." Down in the comments, so many millennial parents related."
Adult children frequently inherit extensive possessions from aging parents, often transported from attics filled with decades of accumulated items. The contents can include treasured jewelry, timeless toys, and forgotten photographs alongside broken items, outdated books, and stacks of childhood worksheets. The retention of seemingly useless objects can create tension between generations, especially between minimalists and parents with strong attachments to belongings. The volume of possessions can overwhelm heirs during home renovations or after a parent's death. Online communities often report shared experiences, with many attributing the behavior to a persistent scarcity mindset among older generations.
Read at Scary Mommy
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