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The Proper Amount of Clothes to Own

I own a dresser full of clothes, plus about a dozen button-down shirts, and 1 suit. On top of that, I own two pairs of winter boots, 2 pairs of everyday black boots, 1 pair of sneakers, and my beloved Vibram 5 Fingers.

I do not own 60 rubbermaid containers full of clothes.

Unfortunately, my mother-in-law did.

This picture is of rubbermaid containers stacked 4x5x3, with around 20 garbage bags full of clothes, hangers, and shoes thrown on top. And a little girl who was asked to pose to provide scale, but decided to run around the pile instead.

We’ve got about 50 bags of garbage waiting for the dumpster to get delivered, and a garage full of enough stuff to hide two cars.

This is how I’ve been spending my weekends. Hopefully, by the end of the coming weekend, we can get a contractor in the house to discuss fixing it up as a rental unit.

Hoarding is a serious problem. As we go through the house and her collected papers, I’m realizing how little I let my mother-in-law’s mental state play into my interactions with her. We had a rough relationship, and I’m only now starting to realize some of the foundations of that. I doubt we would have gotten along, but there would have been less stress if I had been more forgiving.

Until you can get in someone’s head, try to keep forgiveness and compassion in your interactions(barring outright evil). You may be surprised at how your relations unfold.

You’re Gonna Die, Part 2

Finance, Life

You know that, at some point, you’re going to shuffle off of this mortal coil.

You will die.

Hopefully, you’ll have lived your life is such a way that the even won’t be easy for your heirs, but you can do a bit to make the process less painful for them. Do you want them gutting your house trying to find out if you have a will, or does the idea of a treasure hunt for a life insurance policy make you smile?

Assuming you don’t intend to sit in the afterlife giggling about how difficult you’ve made life for your offspring, the first thing you need to do is find a spot to put your important paperwork. This should, ideally, be a fireproof safe, which you can get for under $50. You’re looking for something big enough to hold the things that matter, while being able to withstand a bit of fire, in case the part of “Grim Reaper” is being played by an arsonist.

The next thing you need to do is put your important papers in the safe. Seriously, this beats both filing your insurance papers in a telephone book stacked in the corner and wrapping an envelope full of cash in a 10 year old newspaper and storing it with your recycling. It’s also superior to tucking an insurance policy in a coupon mailer and losing it the cracks of a chair.*

Important papers include:

Your will
Life insurance policies, including accidental death policies
Bank account information, but don’t forget to remove these if you close an account
Safe deposit box information
Car titles and lien releases, if applicable
The deed to your house
Investment accounts
Retirement accounts

Things that are not important papers for your heirs:

The last 30 years of your monthly gas bill
The last 30 years of your electric bill
Home Shopping Network receipts
Child support filings for your 33 year old daughter who has 3 kids of her own
Coupon mailers
Credit card offers
10 year old angry letters to the police department about that guy in the silver car who ran a stop sign in the grocery store parking lot

The final thing you need to do to make this all work is tell someone about it. Don’t hope somebody will find a book that has “In case of death, my will is here” scrawled inside the cover, buried in your kitchen. Really. And if that is your plan, don’t move the will later, without updating the book.

Your homework over the weekend is to gather up your important papers and put them in a box. Then tell someone about the box.

*I wish I was making this up.

Prepping for an Estate Sale

Finance

At the end of the month, we’re having a massive garage/estate sale. When my mother-in-law died, she left us a lot of stuff.

A lot.

Really, when I say “lot”, I mean it. When most people say they have a lot of stuff, they mean they’ve got a closet to clean out. That’s similar to looking at a “scale of the universe” app and comparing a grain of salt to the Oort cloud. We’ve donated several truckloads of blankets, jackets, and toiletries to a homeless shelter and more than 80 rubbermaid containers full of clothes to the Salvation Army. That’s on top of two dumpsters(big enough to park a truck in) full of garbage of things we didn’t think were worth salvaging. That has still left us with several rooms packed full of stuff.

When I say ” a lot”, I mean it in a visceral, oh-my-god-can-this-be-over-or-should-we-consider-arson kind of way.

Now, it’s time to get rid of the stuff that’s left.

The things that have sentimental value have already come home with us.

The things that look unique, rare, or collectible–like the 1970s Pepsi glasses–have been set aside for more research. They may end up in the sale, or on eBay, depending on what we find out.

From here, I think I can just follow my garage sale guide.

We’re going to run the sale on Friday, Saturday, and Monday of Labor Day weekend, to maximize traffic.

We’ll advertise in the paper and put up some signs. The house is on the busiest street nearby, so passing traffic should be high.

The nice thing about having an emptied house is that setup can be completely done ahead of time. We’re setting up tables and starting to price it all this weekend.

On the days of the sale, we’ll have at least 2 people working the entire time. One will be inside, while the other will be outside for the tools and furniture that are getting sold. Both will have money and be able to make change.

Outside, we’ll have the bigger pieces of furniture, tools, and some kid stuff to draw in passerby. Inside will be the appliances, jewelry, and the small and/or valuable items. We’ll only be setting up in the living room and dining room, with the back hallway and kitchen roped off, to control access and visibility.

We’ve got a bit of help available at different times over the weekend, so we should be able to handle the entire sale, including breaks, relatively smoothly.

Have you ever run an estate sale? Anything I’m missing?

Failed Side Hustle: Scrapping

Business

Last week, the washing machine in our rental house died. It was older than I am, so this wasn’t really a surprise. It was one of just two appliances we didn’t replace before we moved the renters in.

English: Melting metal in a ladle for casting ... — English: Melting metal in a ladle for casting Deutsch: Metall wird in einer Gießpfanne zum Schmelzen gebracht. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

My wife–bargain shopper that she is–found a replacement on Craigslist. We got it in, then left the dead washing machine next to the replacement, as a warning to any other appliance that thinks it can shirk its assigned work.

This morning, we went over to pull the corpse of our washing machine out of the basement.

Now, I am an out-of-shape desk jockey, my wife is considerably weaker than I am, and a 40 year old washing machine weighs more than 200 pounds.

In the basement.

I’m Superman. Although at one point, I did trade 10 years of the useful life of my right knee in exchange for not letting that thing tumble down the stairs on top of me.

What do you do with a dead washing machine?We could have the garbage company pick it up for $25. Or we could leave it on the curb and wait for some stinking scrapper to take it.

Or…we could join the dark side and scrap it ourselves.

For the uninitiated, scrappers are the people who drive around looking for fence-posts to steal out of other people’s yards, or cut the catalytic converters out of cars parked at park-and-ride bus stops, or steal all of the copper pipes out of your house while your on vacation. Sometimes, they get scrap metal from legitimate sources, I’ve heard.

We decided to go the legitimate route and take the washing machine to the scrap metal dealer in the next town over.

It was pretty easy. We pulled in with the washer in the trailer. A guy on a forklift pulled up and took it, then handed us a receipt to bring to the cashier. She paid us in cash, and we were on our way.

$7.50 richer.

200 pounds of steel, and we made less than $10.

There are people who pay their bills by recycling scrap metal, but I have no idea how. Driving around looking for things to scrap would seem to burn more gas than you’d make turning it in.

Some people scour Craigslist looking for metal things in the free section.

Some people have an arrangement with mechanics to remove their garbage car parts.

Some people are only looking to supplement their government handout checks enough to pay for cigarettes.

Us? We’re going to leave scrapping to the scavengers.

Link Roundup

Misc

Wrestling season is finally over. Q1 is always such a busy time in my house. Now, spring has sprung and it’s time to start enjoying the weather.

On to the links.

Finance:

Here’s an intro guide to settling IRS debts.

Only someone who’s never had to deal with the full default process could think this was a good idea. The Department of Education outsources its collections for a reason. Eliminating private lenders will raise the students’ costs and eliminate options for troubled debtors. Yes, I worked in the industry for several years.

The Guide to Buying Glasses Online. I currently have 6 pairs of glasses that cost me a grand total of $150, with no loss in quality.

PenFed: Credit cards done right.

Not finance:

This is the coolest picture I’ve seen this year. Space pics for under $1000. NASA could take lessons, I think.

I miss the days when napping was possible.

38 Random Acts of Robyn. I’m thinking about incorporating this as a 30 day project.

Lawdog has a great idea to fix the problems with our legislature. It’s a beautiful Constitutional Amendment. If they have to play by the rules they set, the might start setting better rules.

“Only excepting such limited protection as offered by Article One, Section Six, Congress is hereby prohibited from exempting its Members from each, any, and all effects, duties or obligations rendered upon any citizen, or citizens, by any Law, Tax, or other action passed by Congress.”

Charity

Finance, Life

Charitable giving is down. Predictions have been that donations would be up this year, but the reality appears to be otherwise.

I have an admittedly low sample size; I don’t talk to many charities and the 2012 donation amounts aren’t out, yet. The one I do have access to says that donations this year are among the lowest in memory.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been a bit busy cleaning out a hoader’s house. Last weekend, we tackled one of the stashes of toiletries. We came out with several cases of soap, shampoo, blankets, towels, and sleeping pads.

For the right charity, an unopened case of bar soap is better than gold.

When our new-found treasures were delivered to Mary’s Place, I’m told the nuns wept. Mary’s Place is a transitional housing complex attached to a homeless shelter. They were totally and completely out of hygiene products for the residents.

Something that means nothing to me meant the world to someone else. I was just looking for a useful place to dump the stuff we can’t use or don’t want to store, and I made a nun cry.*

People need so much, and so much of what they need is trivial to my family. A blanket? A bar of soap? That’s nothing…to me.

As we go through the rest of the stuff, our focus will be different. Instead of, “Can we sell this at a garage sale, or should we donate it?”, it’s going to be “Can someone get more value out of this than we’ll get by selling it?” We can sell a comforter for $5, or give it to someone who needs to stay warm in the winter.

I’ll forgo $5 for that warm fuzzy feeling.

*Check one off the bucket list.

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