What to do with late parents' stuff?

My dad passed away five years ago, and Mom is now in a nursing home with dementia and balance problems. Her house is unoccupied, so we need to clear it out and sell it. The furniture and all of that can go in an estate sale, but what do you do with old family photos dating back to the 1800s, immigration papers, diplomas, and general stuff they kept from their ancestors, and the other odds and ends that were valuable to my parents, but not to the rest of the family?

I'm not the least bit sentimental about the vast majority of this stuff and I've already taken the few things of my dad's that mean a lot fo me. My sister isn't interested in most of the stuff, nor are my daughters. There is nobody left on my dad's side of the family and only an uncle and a couple of cousins on Mom's side, so we can't send the stuff to family. I'm happy to throw out the tons of photos of me as a kid, and we already have duplicates of the pics with my own kids. It seems a shame to throw the very old photos and some of the other things in the dumpster, but I don't want to clutter up my own house and leave a bunch of crap for my daughters to go through some day. 

Is there a local historical society in town?
 

They may have some interest in some of the items. 

There may be some valuable history there for the right entity. Local university or museum perhaps?

I ended up with a travel trunk full of keepsakes from the old couple that lived in our house originally. No heirs. I will probably donate it to the county history center after I give up trying to find relatives. Check and see if your local city or county has a history center as well.

BTW, you do need to look the stuff over. In the travel trunk I found a bunch of old vacation slides. Twelve of those slides are of the construction of Disney Land, the kind of stuff Disney collectors scramble over. I plan to sell them someday. I also found some cool postcards of places I liked or visited myself.

I would say it's worth going through it and seeing whats there.  The old immigration papers and other documents could be donated to a genealogy or historical center and you never know what pictures might be in there of moments in history that could also be of historical significance.

Agree with the go-thru/sort out.  My folks were in a similar situation with a close family friend with no blood relatives (single/never married, last of the line)

Found all sorts of cool stuff that had been handed down generation to generation like original Lincoln assassination newspapers, things like that.  Some cool old antiques, etc.  Basically my mom and her sister went thru it all, some of it was dispersed to the kids and grandkids (sets of silver and china, furniture, etc) some of it was dumpstered, and some of it was donated.  None of it was sold as that was part of the wishes of the estate.  

But don't just pitch something carte-blanche.  Even if you are told or "know" there is nothing of value, there may be money in the pockets, etc.  A whole house - it took forever.  

If the pictures of people have no names on them, your remaining family have no idea, and there's no interesting buildings in the background, pitch them.  Pictures with Main Street in the background or whatever, somebody wants.

Family documents don't take a lot of storage room, and somebody will be happy to find them when you drop off your perch.

It would be time consuming I'll grant you, but maybe scan everything, then donate or dispose of it. You're kids might have an interest down the road, and an external hard drive or memory card takes up no space to store.

I can't imagine having access to my ancestors photos and documents.  You would have to pry those out of my dead hands.

In reply to RevRico :

I'm doing this now with my parents stuff.  Had 250 slides scanned for Mom, but she passed before they were done.  Sent off another 1,100 slides off for scanning.  This is about half of it!

At some point someone in your family will want to conduct ancestry research.  Those documents will be invaluable.  I would get them scanned.  Do it over time so the cost doesn't hit too hard.

As mentioned above, if there are no names on the pictures you won't need those.  I'm finding a few of those in my parents stuff.  Mostly friends of theirs whom I never knew.  Pitch those.

Thanks for the suggestions. We've been going over there every week, chipping away at it room by room. There are so many photos and slides, it seems like an overwhelming task to sort through it all. We've just been trying to figure out where to draw the line between keeping something or throwing it out. I'm keeping my dad's and his dad's military records and photos. My mom has a file cabinet stuffed full of genealogy records that we're also keeping. All of this is making me want to back a dumpster up to the house and clean out my own attic!

When my mom passed, I asked the family if there was anything they wanted and distributed accordingly.

After that, I took her hope chest and decided that whatever I was keeping had to fit in that.

Make sure you check EVERYTHING. My grandmother had a habit of hiding things in odd places. I inherited a bunch of family photos from her and about 10 years after she passed, it occurred to me that I should probably pull them out of the frames and have a look.

I found some letters that my grandfather (who died when I was four) had written her while he was in the hospital for smoke inhalation (fire fighter before the days of SCBA). It was a really nice thing to find.

All good advice.  I've pared down my parents to half a file cabinet drawer.  Some of it is cool.  

I would go through everything, inside and out. Old people tend to hide cash in strange places, found $400 in a cookbook my Aunt had.

Jayclay said:

I would go through everything, inside and out. Old people tend to hide cash in strange places, found $400 in a cookbook my Aunt had.

I found the title to my great-aunts Buick Park Avenue in between a church bulletin and a chinese menu. 

I have this fear for my kids when we go... I mean, I don't even have time to go through all the pictures we take now!  Imagine trying to sort through 60 years of someone's pictures now!

At least back then they were expensive enough to make you think before you fired the shutter..

As a member of a family that's heavily into genealogy, I'd say at the very least scan the documents and save electronic copies.  You may not be interested, but maybe someday your descendants will be (or there may be other distant relatives right now who are researching family history.)  When that stuff is lost, it's lost forever.

This can be a good lesson for others - if you have old photos of unidentified ancestors, sit down while you can with parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents, etc., try to figure out who they are, and write the names, dates, occasion for the photo and any other information on the back.

Oh, and to answer the OP's question, my solution is to hire a company to estate sale/auction off anything that my siblings don't want..  I haven't needed it in 20+ years, and I won't need it in the future.  Burn it all. 

If there's any living relatives that want anything my parents possess, they can get in touch with them while they're alive.

You may have no interest in it, but the next generation may. If you don't loan it out to a museum, try to find a way to keep it.

My wife has become the archivist for the family tree on her side of the family, and preserves all the documentation she can, and is a bit miffed at times that some stuff got thrown away or went missing.

Going through this as well. Forchinitly I have brothers and a sister that are helping. My parents moved from the house we grew up in to a condo about 7 years ago and forchinitly most of the stuff was gone through then but even now the amount of stuff to go through is still big. 
 

No real help here except that you will be glad you saved stuff some day. As I get older passing on the family history to the next generation has more importance.

If your sister and daughters are not interested, save it for your grandkids. 

Kinda doing the samething myself now, my parents are packing up their home of 50 years and going into an independent living nursing home.  I've run across the original title to my dad's 64' Galaxie he bought new, and copies of pay stubs from ancestors that fought in the Civil War.  It's all going into weather proof tubs until I can sort through it all.

Fortunately.  

When my father passed 6 years ago there was nothing to go through because my step-mother got everything.  She's getting on in years, in poor health and has two households 1,700 miles apart.  It's gonna be a task getting rid of what we don't want and figuring out what needs saving.

This occurred to me on the "what to do with a piano" thread.  I really wish she'd start decluttering her life while she still can and not wait till the job falls to my sister and I.

Jayclay said:

I would go through everything, inside and out. Old people tend to hide cash in strange places, found $400 in a cookbook my Aunt had.

i found a $100 bill in the Machinery Handbook my dad kept on his bench at work.

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) :

I still have my mom's piano.

It's still in the farmhouse 3 provinces away and will sit there until the house falls down around it.