My 90+ parents moved into assisted living recently -- not planned, necessitated by my mom's stroke. Dad picked out all the things they wanted from the house and either took them to their apartment or stored them. Now I'm stuck having to go through the lifetime of their stuff (and much of my grandmother's and beyond). I'm not their only child -- one brother predeceased me, the other lives 3 hours away and...isn't very helpful, more because he's just kind-of useless when it comes to this.
My mother made it clear all her life the importance of keeping All The Things -- family history things, her personal childhood things, her writings, everything her grandkids ever gave her (and a few from us). I have an issue with emotional entanglement with my mom (yes, I'm in therapy) -- love her to pieces, but this is really making things hard, as I am pretty much the only one to go through all their stuff now. Dad's done, Mom's not able to, brother has what he wanted and that's good enough for him.
I am not physically healthy. I have a number of chronic illnesses, and having to be in charge of this (well, do a lot of it myself, though my adult son helps when he can) is making me sicker. My husband (who has taken on the role of Person to Sell The House -- i.e., setting up all that) has hired a company to do an auction and cleanout, but we still need to get out those things that we want to keep.
But I don't know how to decide what's important anymore. Her beanie from her college dorm with her name on it? Her Girl Scout handbook with her childish signature in it? All their piles of underlined and notated Bibles? Her wedding dress? Her baby doll from childhood?
I'm also having to curate the stuff for the other family members -- saving photos and such for my nieces and nephews (who live out of town). What to keep? What to throw away? I've taken photos of Mom's knickknacks and sent to the nieces, and they're having me pull things for them.
We had a "treasure hunt" day on Saturday, where I invited my brother, and my deceased bro's ex-wife (we're all still friends). Nephews came. We got the attic unloaded into the carport. Bro took what he wanted and drove back home (3 hours away), couldn't help otherwise because he "didn't know what to do" (even with my instructions). XSIL helped for awhile but then left. It was just me and my son for 5 hours (hubby had just had foot surgery) going through a 3,000 sq ft house full of memorabilia, treasures and mostly junk. I've never felt so abandoned.
And it is nowhere near done.
But that's my pity party. The truth is, I can't go through everything, the auction may turn up some things we missed, but ... I'm overwhelmed and just need to figure out how to stop being the curator of my mom's life. She expected that of me. But I can't, now. I just don't know how to let go of that and let go of her things. I somehow ended up the family historian, but we don't own a museum.
Anything that's 2D, have someone take photographs and scans and name/arrange them logically. I have a phone app called vFlat Scan that automatically captures and straightens docs that I photograph so they can be saved as clean-page PDFs, it's a good way to get rid of paperwork that *may* be needed/useful in future.
This should all be paid for by your folks' accounts via their POA -- the work of organizing their belongings is a job they were responsible for and left undone, not something you are responsible for.