Comment by scrozier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by scrozier | Hacker News Reader

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This is insightful. My father died 2 1/2 years ago, leaving my siblings and me with 6 houses and 3 commercial properties, all full--basement to ceiling--with junk (except one of the commercial properties, which was rented). "They are not interested in anyone else have [sic] a say in the matter," is exactly right. My dad wouldn't even have a conversation about it. He didn't get angry or anything, he just passively refused to engage. It's a gigantic mess for us to clean up now.

It was coupled, for my dad, with extreme frugality. He seemingly willfully deprived himself (and his family) of any fun or comfort by acquiring cheap versions of everything, or rigging up odd simulacrums of things, like the whole-house "air conditioner" he made from a cleaning bucket and some coffee cans. He bought a boat, then put such an underpowered motor on it that it was a joke. We had water skis, but they were rotted and just sat sadly against the wall, unusable.

Oh, my time's up? See you next week, doctor.

I know some people with similar stories. The frugality ends up being a cause for purchasing too much cheap stuff, with the hopes that "the next" will be as good as something top-shelf. Or it's stuff for their DIY project. The reality is that they don't need any of those things, it's just aspirational. Throwing them away kills the aspiration.

I know some quasi-hoarders who are similar, too: I know a person who has 30 guitars but they're so cheap and badly maintained that they're probably less worth than a high-end one. And the "next guitar" they buy is only good for a couple days.

Oh, boats and hoarders are a bad combination.

My buddy's dad moved his boat from the water to his driveway to do a bit of work on it. Over the course of a decade, it went from "we can probably sell this for $15k" to "we can hopefully still get $5k for the engines" to "we gotta pay somebody to haul this away now".

Dad had 6-8 boats of various descriptions, but one part of the description of each was, "unusable." He also collected outboard motors, which sat on stands in the musty cottage basement. Never thought to combine the two, I guess.

My friend's grandfather ran a marine business, so had many engines and accessories in stock. After he died they left his shop untouched for a couple decades. At that point, they had grown a sentimental attachment to those things even though it was just "inventory"; not the grandfather's prized possensions or anything.

So yeah, they got lots of old engines lying around on display now. And a box of compasses and other crap.

A few years before dad died, I flew up to help him "clean up some stuff." I did make some progress against the poison ivy in the back yard, but he wouldn't let me in the house and, in the end, we took two phone books to the recycling center.

Amusingly, this is exactly something that happened to me (cleaning the yard and overgrown trees then not allowed in the house)

This is interesting. So your dad was both incredibly wealthy (9 houses in total, boat, etc) yet oppressively frugal?

Where did his money come from?

Well, not incredibly wealthy by American standards. Working man. No college. Worked at an oil refinery in the Toledo, Ohio area. But he was so frugal that he accumulated stuff, including real estate, throughout his life, and was the beneficiary of a great economy, overall, in the last 70 years. He wound up with a decent nest egg, which amused him greatly.

> whole-house "air conditioner" he made from a cleaning bucket and some coffee cans

That sounds kind of cool.

But yeah, I'd still be pissed if my dad left me a mess like this to clean up. The property is nice and all, but a lot of it may need to get torn down if hoarding caused any structural damage (it can, houses aren't built to be filled to the brim with stuff), and that's not cheap work to get done up front. Probably not that easy to sell if you decide not to clean up the messes either.

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