Information

[MaBuglet]

 oh man!  I wish you luck!!  We just did my Nonnie's house and it was only a 550 sq ft apartment that she'd had for less than 4 years.  It was a nightmare!  We found money in shoes, in toilet paper rolls, in vases...filled with water!  It was crazy!

[lilkoala3]

 Uh... Have fun?  Good luck!

[girlsmommy]

 Good luck! 

[imwickedwitch]

 Sounds like a big job but think of all the memories you will relive while you are doing it!  Good luck, hon!

[MamaK321]

 oh goodness, that is a lot of work. My dad was doing somewhat the same last weekend, it can be hard going through just a little bit of sentimental stuff, I can't imagine the piles you'll have. Good luck!

[LKappy]

 WOW! That is going to be a big job, but also super neat. I bet there are lots of sentimental/valueable/irreplaceable things there. I would love to be able to do that.

Good luck!

[LuvMyBoys]

 Good Luck! That sounds like fun. We did that with my grandma's old house (she is still living) but she down sized from a huge 5 bedroom house to a mobile home.... we had to go through everything. We found some neat things.

[evilqueen]

 Did you make it out of there alive, or do you still need the search party?  I hope you are having fun.

[grifscap]

 It will be a lot of work. But enjoy the treasure find. You will find old family pictures and so much more.

[Scraprat]

 I know this will be hard for you and your mom Laura and that you have been dreading this!  I hope it all goes well.  I'll be thinking of you!  Let us know what happened when you get home and have a chance to post.

[fong33]

 Good luck with this effort.  Hope you find some good memories amid the piles.

[Art_Teacher]

 Well, I survived!  We barely made a dent in the piles, and my Mom and aunts had already been there several times, sorting and organizing and hauling away trash...this is too much!  I was just overwhelmed with where to look next, plus Mom and the aunts trying to show us what they had found and tell us about things, and asking if we want things....ooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh....my brain is fried!


We looked at all the glassware and pottery they had taken out of the china cupboards...I have several lovely pieces which I will hopefully be able to use and remember my Grandma.  We went through her jewelry....she hardly ever wore any that I can remember, but she had scads of costume jewelry and little trinkets.  I found a few fun pieces, and some more modern pieces that she had been given by people.  Nothing with huge value, but still nice to find.  We did find 3 ring boxes...one had a regular sized emerald ring, one with a small topaz ring, and one with a teensy baby peridot ring, and we surmised that she bought them for my older cousin, myself, and my younger cousin, when my younger cousin was a baby.  Now, there are 3 more girl cousins after that one, but those are our birthstones and they correspond with our ages, so we got those.  Grandma was always buying things for gifts, putting them away and forgetting to give them!  I also got some of my Grandma's high school books, with her name inside and her notes in the margins.  She had lovely handwriting. 

The hardest part is wanting everything that my Grandma collected and loved to have a place somewhere with someone who appreciates it....there is too much for that.  I had to promise dh to be reasonable, because our family's tendency to save everything is what caused this mess in the first place! 

Does anybody have any ebay, online auction advice for how to go about dealing with the mass quantities of things that we will need to sell?  I know some of these things have value, but I don't know how to advise my Mom to go about assessing them and the best way to get the money from them.

[imwickedwitch]

[quote="ScrapGoo"] We are going through the same at my grandmother's house right now... yikes, just look EVERYWHERE!  She had literally thousands of dollars hidden in the house: in drawers, in boxes, in magazine pages!  It is nuts.  Good luck!
[/quote]
A lot of older people who lived through the crash seem to do this.  They saw the banks fail first hand so it kinda makes sense that they would stash it like that even though we cannot imagine it.

[Scraprat]

 Laura, since I don't know much (hardly anything!) about antiques and things like that, I would suggest checking out ebay for similar items and see what they're going for.  You might be able to do a search on ebay too, just to get info, but I'm not sure about that.  Is there anyone in the London area that deals with antiques or auctions that could give you appraisals or at least some ideas on what things might be worth?  You might consider having an estate auction if there is enough stuff to sell and make it worth your while.

[Jeanne Marie's Scraps]

 good luck! i love doing that kind of thing........... want some help

[Mom2Bri]

 I wish I could come help. It sounds like fun. We did that at my ex-boyfriends grandmothers house about 20 years ago. I got several good books. But we found some interesting things too. There was a lapel type watch that had a heart hanging from it with little diamonds. She had a ton of antique glassware. we found tax returns from the 40's where her husband who sold insurance made like $60,000 a year.

[Wheeliegirl]

 Good Luck!

[Beth-W]

 Good luck sorting through their stuff!

[suslvgeo]

 hugs hon! Hope you did well~~

[butterfly843]

 Good luck!