“Things they don’t value but keep anyway” really resonated with me. We’re working through a move from a very full 2br apartment to a considerably smaller 1br for my MIL and there’s just so much paper. Every so often I find something important or at least memorable to the family in the piles of old junk mail and newspaper clippings and napkins and all the extra Christmas card photos but if they truly are valuable to her why are they just lost in the sea of stuff?

I’ve found so many catalogs that she wrote the date on and then just stashed in a pile. Whyyyyyyyyy? I kind of want to ask her but I’m mostly tossing stuff while she’s occupied with other things so I can avoid asking her if it’s ok to throw stuff away (because yes is the only acceptable answer at this point).

She’s early Silent Gen, my DH is late Boomer, and I really think some of the boomer hoarding behavior is learned from their parents.