Sorting the remains

My four siblings and I grew up in Los Angeles. Years after we had all grown and gone, my parents built a new primary residence in the San Diego area. But wanting to keep a foothold in L.A., they bought a townhouse there. That gave them a convenient and comfortable place to stay when they were in town, either to socialize or when dad needed to be in the office. Upon their passing, we had to clear out and sell both the L.A. townhouse and their principal residence in northern San Diego County.

Selling the townhouse proved to be fairly easy. It was a prime unit in a desirable part of the city. Not so easy was the process of disposing of its contents. Early on we hired appraisers (one for each house), so we knew with what we were working. Then we spent several weeks discussing who wanted which items. Fortunately, there were only a handful that multiple people had expressed interest in, and negotiating who would end up with what turned out to be a relatively easy process. And because we’ve each had our own fully furnished homes for several years now, with some exceptions, what got taken were smaller items with sentimental value. Most of my folks’ possessions remained unclaimed.

In L.A., a consignment house took a fair chunk of the furniture, artwork, dishes and such that remained after we had claimed our prizes. The rest we either gave to charity, or, along with some personal items we had boxed up, we trucked down to the San Diego house, to be dealt with later.

Unlike with the L.A. house, my parents had constructed their San Diego house to live in, not to sell. Its design and configuration, while adding up to a stunning whole (think Architectural Digest) made for a house that needed a very particular buyer. And by the time we were ready to put the house on the market, the pool of buyers looking for small estates was considerably smaller than what it had been just a few years earlier. Thus, it took some extensive staging (involving a lot of repainting), multiple price changes, and even a period of pulling the home from the market altogether before we managed to sell my folks’ San Diego place. But the nearly two years that process took had one benefit, it gave us time to remove all of the personal items and all of the other items we were claiming. And yet, in the end, we suddenly found ourselves with quite a lot of furniture and countless smaller items we needed to move out of the house and garages. Thus, the mini-storage units.

The San Diego house finally sold in late July of this year, but it wasn’t until last weekend that some of us could spend time sorting through the contents of those units. With the assistance of some hired labor, we pulled everything out. We photographed each item we thought a consignment house might want, and sorted the rest into piles depending upon its ultimate destination. We then put all of the consignment stuff back into the storage units (the consignment house will eventually take what they think will sell), and spent the rest of the time sorting through boxes and trucking the remainder to various places (Goodwill got a lot). Once the consignment house has taken what they want, we’ll go back, dispense with the rest, and relinquish the storage units.

With that, the job of dispersing my parents’ effects will be done. It proved to be a significant effort, but the process of going through all of their things gave me added insight into the kind of people they were. And it made me think about my own situation, and what my kids will have to deal with someday. Hopefully my wife and I will be able to make that eventual job easier for our own kids and their spouses.