Settling an estate can be time consuming — especially when people kept most everything
Almost everyone, at one time or another, goes through the agony of having to settle an estate.
It involves the loss of loved ones and change — two scary things. It involves hard decisions like what to keep and what to let go. When the estate you are dealing with belonged to people who rarely threw away anything, it involves a lot of work.
But it has its humorous moments. I opened a small decorative box just as a whim and inside was a single twist tie from a bread wrapper. I found a stack of $2 bills which someone thought would be collectors’ items. At least they are still worth $2 a piece.
Unlike the four broken toilet seats I found, some things can be useful. Despite having our own cluttered house, we brought stuff home. And we’re not even close to being done. Just beginning really. There is still plenty of stuff to be donated.
It is important to go through every paper they kept just to be sure you don’t pitch valuable stuff. We found precious old deeds to farms and record books detailing how they paid for those farms year by year. We also found numerous certificates making someone an honorary member of organizations for charity donations.
Some stuff was mysterious. “What is this,” someone would ask, holding up an object. No one ever knew.
After discarding income tax returns from 50 years ago, assorted bank statements and old newspaper clippings, I have six large trash bags of paper to recycle. There is a large truck in the farmyard being filled with old scrap iron for recycling. Old tractors have been pulled out to offer to people interested in restoring them. All Farmalls.
Some things strike a sentimental chord from long ago and can’t be parted with. But even so, what do you do with the long curved horns off a steer which was like a pet?
As usual, I will manage to do some things wrong. I took some trash out to the burn trailer in the yard and set it on fire. That’s when I discovered that the burn trailer is for hauling stuff to the burning pile in a safe place. I am a literal kind of guy. People have to be more specific when they tell me things.
It looks like it’s going to be months before we are clear of this. Sometimes you are wistful when you find things. Other times you just wonder “What the heck?”