You can’t take it with you
The days of handing family heirlooms down are well and truly gone. Baby boomers are only accepting their parents’ stuff reluctantly, while Gen X and Gen Y are refusing theirs outright.
Check out the classified advertisements in any New Zealand newspaper and the death notices make fascinating reading.
The parents of today’s baby boomers, who were born between 1925 and 1942 and are sometimes termed the traditional, or veteran generation, are regularly surviving to a ripe old age, dying in their 80s and 90s.
Most weeks, you’ll even find a lucky few who managed to make it into their second century.
With many having lived through all, or part of World War II, these people worked hard to get ahead. They placed a great deal of value on the homes they created and the possessions they collected.
Often married young, they treasured wedding gifts of fine china tea sets, sparkling crystal bowls and glasses, quality silverware and elaborate furniture, regarding these precious goods as the hallmark of a gracious home and a legacy to be guarded and preserved for the next generation.
However, it seems that those days are firmly over.
Baby boomers, now in their 50s and 60s, are often in the process of downsizing and decluttering for themselves when an estate comes their way, complete with mahogany sideboards and credenzas, oak dining tables and chairs, damask tablecloths, oriental rugs and elaborately framed landscape oil paintings that they just don’t want.
Auction houses will generally only take very high-end goods while antique shops or licensed second-hand sellers often can’t shift what they refer to as “brown furniture”, and other typical estate treasures, at a price that makes dealing in them worthwhile. Many of the latter have closed down, abandoning bricks and mortar in favour of selling online, but even then, items that would have fetched hundreds of dollars a decade or so ago often sell for next to nothing today.
With charity shops, it’s a different story. In many cases, they’re paying subsidised rents and are confident of an army of volunteers, yet many still say that they simply can’t keep up with the constant influx of goods from estates and that they need more manpower.
Helen, who does a regular weekly shift at her local Hospice store reports that they are constantly inundated, and that the flow of items seems never-ending.
“Our truck goes out to a new estate almost every day, and it’s all good stuff, but because there’s so much of it we have to try to keep things moving, which means asking prices far below what the owners will have paid.
“That might seem awful, but we have to be very pragmatic. We price things in order to shift them and ultimately it’s all good for Hospice.
“I’m in my late 70s myself, and working here has inspired me to downsize significantly. Whenever I come in for my shift I make a point of bringing a couple of things with me.”
She says, “My husband and I have talked to our children, who are all in their 50s, about what they would like from our estate.
“Basically, they seem to place the most value on family photos, and particularly the slides of my husband’s and my world travels as hitchhikers in the early 1960s.
“It’s helped us all to get a sense of perspective.”
Margaret Engelander and her daughter Linka own Over and Above Moving, a Tauranga business offering complete estate clearances, and its sister company Secondhand Avenue.
They agree that the issue of baby boomer sons and daughters not wanting their parents’ stuff is “massive”.
“Just this week, I packaged up a box of fine crystal and china and sent it to a lady’s daughter in Australia,” says Margaret.
“She’d already said that she didn’t have room for it, but the mother simply said that she was getting it anyway.”
Margaret says there’s a silver tsunami in the Bay of Plenty right now and that she and Linka are running to keep up with demand for their services.
“When people are downsizing to go into a home or retirement village, we encourage them to be ruthless but many just can’t do it.
“They know that their possessions are going to be a liability when they’ve died but they’re the generation that never threw anything away in case it came in handy and it’s very hard for them to change that very firm mindset. They still save old stockings to tie up the tomatoes, and iron and reuse wrapping paper.”
She says that a lot of items end up in garages and storage units simply because no one knows what to do with them.
As a second-hand dealer, Margaret has become so passionate about helping families avoid estate headaches that she gives regular talks to the senior community.
“I tell them that it’s not that their treasures aren’t beautiful, because often they are, but society has changed and today’s generation — Gen X and Gen Y, tend to go for cheap, mass-produced homewares bought at chain stores for bargain-basement prices. This way they can follow decorating trends and keep up to date.”
She says that this will inevitably bring its own problems.
“We worry about plastic bags, rightly, but what about all the other throwaway stuff we’re buying? I can’t bear to think of what our landfills will be like in another 20 years.”
Margaret says she is heartened seeing some shops giving older furniture a new lease on life by painting it in the shabby chic style and selling it to younger customers, but this will need to happen a whole lot more in order to solve the problem.
“We all need to look at ourselves and make a new definition of ‘value’.
“Is it sentimental or is it actual? There’s a very big difference.”
Baby boomers . . . are often in the process of downsizing and decluttering for themselves when an estate comes their way.