Who knows what is in my garage and what to do with it... No one.
We have full trust set up for our other stuff in life but my garage is just there with a couple of cars in it. I feel like I should at least talk to my kids about it and leave a link to a build thread or two with the titles. Who knows where the titles are? Me.
I do have a friend that could dispose of the rest for me.
Free Birds sparked this thought.
Tim recently(?) had a column on this.. I can't find the link, but it discussed this sort of thing.
for the love of my children, please don't let my wife sell it for what i told her i paid for it!
This is a good topic. All my tools and accumulated parts and assorted other miscellany... It's a lot. I guess it would go to my kids. My son might have some use for some of it, but honestly, not much. My wife and kids would probably end up calling my car friends to come and try to make sense of it all/take what they want/help them sell it. Clearly, it's something I need to put more thought into.
We'll be dealing with this at some point on my wife's side, too. Her dad is in good health but is getting up there, and he has a full machine shop in his garage. CNC milling machine, several lathes, the whole bit. None of us have any clue what all that stuff is worth.
FB Marketplace add:
"FREE to first person to respond: ALL contents of shop including cars and tools. MUST leave a CLEAN EMPTY building." $3k deposit refundable upon completion of clean-out".
She would call any of my car circle before posting the add, but it would be the same terms. Good deal for both parties.
Yah, and not just the car stuff. I have a lot of hobby stuff that my wife would probably have no idea what to do with.
I periodically assess what I currently need and use, and what's been sitting on the shelf for too long. A shortage of space, freeing up cash, and not wanting to burden anyone else are all reasons to do so.
My wife probably wouldn't have a clue, but my kids are all involved with whatever hobby we are pursuing. They know what's in the shop and what it's worth. 80% of the value is tools that they have borrowed at one time or another. They will divvy up what they want to keep and guide my wife on disposing of the rest of it.
I've always tried to be rather spartan, very often less than successful.When my Mother-in-Law passed several years ago we literally filled a large dumpster even after all the donations.
Her passing was my inspiration to clean the garage. I sold or gave away all tons of stuff.
The Datsun and the Mustang each have a spare engine. The rest of the spares are on two shelves of one of the garage cabinet.
I have log books for both cars that detail everything about that and what spares are on hand.
If I got vaporized by Martians tomorrow whoever came to buy the cars could cart almost everything away with the car.
We convince ourselves we need those "spares" come in handy but the reality is for the most part we are some level of hoarder.
Who needs a plan?
(I've heard a dozen preacher's call this scenario out)
I will add if you care about your family at all, don't do this to them.
One of my dearest friends passed away two years ago and he had tons of tools and guns. The guns are worth tens of thousands of dollars (he had that many). He was only 63 and rightly assumed he had quite a bit of time left...................guess what, we don't.
Going through all of his stuff is painful, so much so that it's crippling.
I can't say this enough; clean out the stuff and catalog what you're keeping.
Note: If getting rid of stuff causes you serious anxiety then seek the help of a mental health professional.
I realize when my parents passed away within two years of each other that all the stuff of 80 years they had accumulated and prized was worthless to most other people. A lot of it went into a dumpster. My wife and father-in-law are now dealing with that after my mother-in-law died a year ago. She keeps agonizing over what to do with possessions that meant a lot to my mother-in-law and nothing to anyone else. I do not intend to inflict that on my family. My stuff is worthless to anyone except me. If they can throw some ads on Facebook and get a little cash then that's fine but if not then I do not want them to worry about it for even a minute.
Apprenticeboy keeps asking if he can have all my cool stuff, knowing I have two boys, one of which would have no interest.
When something goes on sale I like to stock up. So when I die one of them is probably going to take my synthetic oil collection, the other will get the 14 cases of windshield washer fluid.
Everyone at my funeral gets a tazer.
Last person standing gets my stuff.
In reply to Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) :
Vultures! The lot of you!
I can help, I'm a machinist and need machines. NO! bad GRM'r!
What I mean to say is I know someone in the used machinery business.
I need to stock up an stuff for my kids to get rid of.
My current plan is to add some recommendations in to the trust next time we update it. You all do update your trusts right, Right? Me neither but I will, trust me.
This is something I've thought about. I have a lot of E36 M3 -- I mean a lot, by most normal-people standards. Guns? Two safes full. Vehicles and trailers? Several. Tools? Oh god. I have a warehouse for work that houses a lot, and that warehouse is pretty full and I'd like to move into something with more than double the square footage. And a vehicle yard. At home? Well, I have a garage full of tools and reloading stuff. I also have a workshop out back that's absolutely packed with tools.
How packed?
Well, the workshop in the back yard has a 4' x 8' CNC plasma table, a Bridgeport mill, a large lathe, a small CNC mill, a 4' x 8' welding table (and a whole bunch of welders), several layout and cutting tables, mechanic's tools, metalworking/woodworking tools, etc. It's getting obscene.
My wife and I do not have children. What's going to happen with all this STUFF when I'm gone? I don't believe my wife would want or make use of most of it, and I don't have anyone else to whom to will it. Between the garage, the workshop, and the warehouse I have hundreds of thousands of dollars of tools.
In reply to brandonsmash :
I'm in a similar situation.
You know those massive, old school 150 year old barns? You can accumulate a lot of E36 M3 in one of those over 30 years.
An attached two-car garage is a great way to prompt/force yourself to thin out things you no longer need or want - to replace them with things that you do, of course. Interests shift and so do equipment requirements.
My home is not bad. I have a couple too many cars, but nothing that is really worth a bunch of dough, so no big deal.
If I drop off my perch too soon, though, my business will be a gentle nightmare. Not so much from equipment and stuff, that's what auction services are for. It's more that I am intimately involved in every aspect of this place, and nobody else even knows the passwords for stuff. At 64, I really need to sell part of this place...
In reply to brandonsmash :
Do you use the everything?
When I say use do you use it; if you haven't used it in 5 years and have no prospects of using it in the next 5......away it goes. Pass it on to someone who will use it or sell it for whatever the market brings.
My fiancée and my sister-in-law talk about this stuff all the time. If I go first, my brother gets everything and can do with as he pleases. I have a 5,000sq-ft shop full of just about every fabrication tool imaginable, similar to brandonsmash above, 4 trailers, a dozen cars, lots of guns/ammo and more. My brother on the other hand has a 45,000 warehouse filled to the rafters with 80 vehicles, 3 enclosed trailers(48', 42' and 24') full of "treasures" and just an unimaginable assortment of CRAP! Most of which would require a dozen dumpsters to dispose of. It will happen some day, it's just a matter of who goes first. The girls can't believe that we collectively have so much "stuff" and can't understand why, but it makes us happy, so they put up with it.
My wife and I have in writing in our paperwork that two of my car friends will help her deal with what's in the garage. They get first dibs on anything, then they help her sell or toss the rest. They agreed to it. No backsies!
brandonsmash said:My wife and I do not have children. What's going to happen with all this STUFF when I'm gone? I don't believe my wife would want or make use of most of it, and I don't have anyone else to whom to will it. Between the garage, the workshop, and the warehouse I have hundreds of thousands of dollars of tools.
Dad? ...you can adopt me for free. 😂
Back in the 50's/60's my grandfather did everything and had a modest garage in the back of his house in Chicago. He died in 1966 and my grandmother stayed in the house and she rented the garage out to gear heads to store cars.
Stuff would disappear and my Dad would ask - where did the compressor go? Guy down the street wanted it and bought it.
If enough people know folks will ask to buy the stuff.
Reminds me, I really should start thinking about a will.
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