Have you guys ever wondered what to do with your 'stuff' after your time ?
Nowadays I see so many people crossing over to the other side at a very early age ( obituaries column in the paper) that I wonder how long my world will last as I am well past their average age !
Anyway , what to do with the 'stuff' is going to be an issue at some point of time. For a person crossing over to the other side it really doesn't matter as he/she will never require any of it again.
Many of us would have quite a lot of drivers and components, active and passive . I can't give any of it away now as I have several plans to make use of them. But inevitably a lot of it will end up being unused on D day.
What does one do to ensure that it ends up with people who will really make use of them. That way the effort of having got them will not be wasted as they will get used, at least by someone else.
Nowadays I see so many people crossing over to the other side at a very early age ( obituaries column in the paper) that I wonder how long my world will last as I am well past their average age !
Anyway , what to do with the 'stuff' is going to be an issue at some point of time. For a person crossing over to the other side it really doesn't matter as he/she will never require any of it again.
Many of us would have quite a lot of drivers and components, active and passive . I can't give any of it away now as I have several plans to make use of them. But inevitably a lot of it will end up being unused on D day.
What does one do to ensure that it ends up with people who will really make use of them. That way the effort of having got them will not be wasted as they will get used, at least by someone else.
MAYbe some of it can be put up for sale on diyaudio.com at attractive prices ( the owner won't need money anymore!) and proceeds goes to diyaudio.com to fund it's expenses ? The owner will have to leave instructions to someone to enable this to happen. The money generated and used as 'donation' would have come from the owner of the items and should be 'acknowledged' and maybe he/she could 'oversee' the operation from the other dimension. An 'acknowledgment' would be nice !
If I leave it to my family, they will sell or dump all of it with the garbage man ! 
They wouldn't really need the money and wouldn't want to take the trouble sifting through all the stuff which they wouldn't know anything about.
It's a great pity that no one in the younger generation in the family has an interest in 'making' things ! They just buy gizmo's and chuck them when they stop working !
Could diyaudio.com have a 'virtual garbage dump' where people who want to give away stuff for free or a small consideration and shipping fees put up their list of things ? Some stuff really wouldn't be used and it could be cleared off now. Never know it might be just something another person wants to experiment with !
They wouldn't really need the money and wouldn't want to take the trouble sifting through all the stuff which they wouldn't know anything about.
It's a great pity that no one in the younger generation in the family has an interest in 'making' things ! They just buy gizmo's and chuck them when they stop working !
Could diyaudio.com have a 'virtual garbage dump' where people who want to give away stuff for free or a small consideration and shipping fees put up their list of things ? Some stuff really wouldn't be used and it could be cleared off now. Never know it might be just something another person wants to experiment with !
Lucky you, you haven't anything to be concerned about !
Right, no richer who has the most, but who needs the least.
Just my thoughts,
I think I will get to a point when I don't want to build anything or my eyesight will become a problem.
At this point I will get a box and put any spares to existing projects into the box including copies of circuit diagrams and instructions. So if the family want to use my amps they can<<thats why I have decided any tube amps will be auto bias..If others can't just plug in a tube then its going in the bin..
Hopfully it may be a bit of nostalgia for them..
Anything else I would just give away or send it for recycle..This forum at least is a place where something of my input or help (such as it is) may survive and serve someone after I'm gone or decide to move on..
So this forum will at some point be a sort of legacy as people "move on"..
I guess the DIY audio community may become even a smaller niche and so this forum may serve them well..
I think to just leave everything to someone else to do is wrong..Its bad enough with clothes and the aftermath of legal tie ups..
I always find it "moving" (emotional) when I see something like a DIY hand carved animal or toy<<<thinking about what was in the mind of the maker when he built or carved it.
Interestingly I only found out a couple of weeks ago that my wife has three plastic storage boxes one with the name of each of our children on them..each contains a selection of toys from their past right back to baby cot toys..with memories photos and books..there is a sealed letter in each box I don't know the content and I haven't said I know about the boxes..
Regards
M. Gregg
I think I will get to a point when I don't want to build anything or my eyesight will become a problem.
At this point I will get a box and put any spares to existing projects into the box including copies of circuit diagrams and instructions. So if the family want to use my amps they can<<thats why I have decided any tube amps will be auto bias..If others can't just plug in a tube then its going in the bin..
Hopfully it may be a bit of nostalgia for them..
Anything else I would just give away or send it for recycle..This forum at least is a place where something of my input or help (such as it is) may survive and serve someone after I'm gone or decide to move on..
So this forum will at some point be a sort of legacy as people "move on"..
I guess the DIY audio community may become even a smaller niche and so this forum may serve them well..
I think to just leave everything to someone else to do is wrong..Its bad enough with clothes and the aftermath of legal tie ups..
I always find it "moving" (emotional) when I see something like a DIY hand carved animal or toy<<<thinking about what was in the mind of the maker when he built or carved it.
Interestingly I only found out a couple of weeks ago that my wife has three plastic storage boxes one with the name of each of our children on them..each contains a selection of toys from their past right back to baby cot toys..with memories photos and books..there is a sealed letter in each box I don't know the content and I haven't said I know about the boxes..
Regards
M. Gregg
Sorry , but your wife's grasp of the workings of 'life' appears to be ahead of you !
Maybe she wants your kids to find this after her time and the 'letter' would be like getting it 'from beyond' ! Really great idea !
I can vouch for the fact that finding things related to your childhood days does bring up some incredible feelings ........ AND a letter that will really fire up the 'heart'.
Hmm.......! Maybe you should leave a similar 'treasure with a note' for each one of them ! Needn't be just their old things , I'm sure you can rustle up some alternative ideas .
Maybe she wants your kids to find this after her time and the 'letter' would be like getting it 'from beyond' ! Really great idea !
I can vouch for the fact that finding things related to your childhood days does bring up some incredible feelings ........ AND a letter that will really fire up the 'heart'.
Hmm.......! Maybe you should leave a similar 'treasure with a note' for each one of them ! Needn't be just their old things , I'm sure you can rustle up some alternative ideas .
I am turning 60 this year and have accumulated far more than my share of "stuff". At the peak, my wife and I had the house and 3 rental storage bays full of "stuff". I never really thought about it, just kept collecting more "stuff".
In the past 4 years my parents and Sherri's parents passed leaving us to deal with a lot of "stuff". The events associated with this has opened our eyes to a whole new set of issues that we never dreamed of. Trust me the "stuff" is the least of the problems.
If you have more than one possible legal heir make sure that you have a very specific will in place that spells out exactly who gets any real property and what the conditions are. Be aware that a trusted family member can get you to sign over rights to said property on your death bed without really understanding what you did. A document giving up the mineral rights on a piece of worthless land can make someone very rich and drive a wedge right through a family. A will that leaves the estate "to be divided equally between my 3 sons" also can break up family ties and leave a mess that hasn't been sorted out in 4 years. In all cases we were the ones that got to clean out the houses and take all the stuff to charity or the trash dump.
This thread is about the "stuff" so I will get back to the topic at hand. We decided to start reducing the "stuff" about 4 years ago. Sherri had lost her job as the warehouse manager and the owner raised our rent. I had over 100,000 tubes and tons of transformers and a lot of "good stuff". I tried all of the usual ways to reduce "stuff" with zero to minimal success.
Hamfests work the best but you need to haul all your "stuff" around and convince people to buy it. I was told that "everything will sell in Dayton". That did turn out to be good advice, but it is a gamble. It cost me about $200 to sell there, I got the hotel stay free using rewards points, and it meant 4 days (sunup to sundown) in a hot parking lot, but I unloaded one cubic Honda Element full of 'stuff" for about $2000. Tube audio equipment sold faster than I could dig it out of the car, all gone before the show opened. Tubes for $1 worked well at local shows, but at Dayton there was a guy with thousands of useful tubes for $0.25, so I lowered my price......and bought some tubes......sweep tubes for a quarter.......I can't say no......
Giving "stuff" away through this and other forums was minimally successful. Offering tons of free tubes will get you several replies, but with a few exceptions, the intended recipient will not pay...even just for shipping. Several times I had people agree to pay for tubes so I boxed them up, but the payment never came. Transformers had a near zero success rate, even using a flat rate box. So, I wound up taking about 1000 pounds of choice tube power transformers to the metal scrapper to be MELTED! About 80,000 tubes were bulk sold to Stan at ESRC for an average of 1 CENT each, in store credit, not even cash.
I have the knowledge of what my "stuff" is, who would use it, and what it is worth, and I couldn't even give much of it away. So I have tossed much of my belongings that I have collected over the past 40 years into the trash. I found amplifiers and speakers that I made in high school buried in the warehouse.
The last of the rental storage bays is now empty, no more rent! We still have "stuff" stashed in every room of the house, and my trailer is full of tubes to haul to Stan. I will sell my old car (1973 Challenger) and be down to a more reasonable level of "stuff". I still have a few thousand tubes and 1000+ pounds of iron. I must realize that it will all likely be tossed when I leave this world.
Two pictures from Dayton....yes all that "stuff" came out of that Element
Attachments
Wow, that sure is a lot of 'stuff'.
You are right about being vague and saying ' divide it up between so and so'.
Better to be specific about the items and to whom it goes. I'd give away most of my hi-fi equipment to friends who'd love to have it. I actually started giving away a lot of things several years ago when I was told that I had a heart condition. So I seriously thought I was going to cop it and even made a video identifying what goes to whom just in case I didn't last that long.
However, luckily, the docs were wrong !
Some of the stuff was already given away to some very happy guys but I still had lots of stuff left over. Then other friends asked me to stop and give my body a chance to recover. I did , so I still have lots of 'stuff' and it never ceases to keep accumulating !
You are right about being vague and saying ' divide it up between so and so'.
Better to be specific about the items and to whom it goes. I'd give away most of my hi-fi equipment to friends who'd love to have it. I actually started giving away a lot of things several years ago when I was told that I had a heart condition. So I seriously thought I was going to cop it and even made a video identifying what goes to whom just in case I didn't last that long.
However, luckily, the docs were wrong !
Some of the stuff was already given away to some very happy guys but I still had lots of stuff left over. Then other friends asked me to stop and give my body a chance to recover. I did , so I still have lots of 'stuff' and it never ceases to keep accumulating !
You are probably quite right about this. My friends who got into this kind of discussion long ago said that it really didn't matter the least bit if all the 'stuff' is given away or goes into a land fill ! It will eventually get there after some more time !
So we can make some plans to satisfy ourselves but not be bothered what really happens to all of it ............the land fill eventually waits for it ! Just a mater of time.
Also proves the saying " NOTHING eventually matters AT ALL !"
Spot on..
There is only "The now"
(This moment in time.. the only real moment in time)
everything else is just a dream..
Here is a thought..imagine you could only remember this moment and no other..(no future & no past).How would it shape our lives?
The past does not exist..the future does not exist...its all an illusion..
The "past" can be altered.....it starts in the present (now)...everything beyond that is out of reach.
The future can be changed it starts in the present..again the future becomes "Now" and at that point can be changed. (choose the path).
In the end nothing matters to us except cause and effect..
(on ourselves and others)
Again in the end we can effect others after our death..
we set cause in what we do..even in the act of dying..
We are "not individuals" (only in our minds)(we experience everything alone)..our lives are shapped by powers beyond our control...Physical, political and social. We can choose to "drop out" however we are still in the grip of life...cause and effect..(And a sprinkle of chaos)
Dosent it all suck..
Regards
M. Gregg
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