It's possible to take this way too far. When my grandfather passed away, I helped my father clean out his house.
The man had a 5-bedroom 2500 sqft house, basically full wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with books and magazines. Most of them were clearly unread.
Getting rid of all of the books was a big effort. Both physically and mentally. Turns out that not too many too many places want to take a bunch of obsolete computer books, and we didn't have the luxury of a couple of years to sell them all on Amazon or something.
It was a burden on all of us. Image a week-long bucket brigade from upstairs and downstairs. Every armful got heavier and heavier.
In the end, most of them went into the dumpster. Probably $100k worth of books purchased over the years, all obsolete and rotting in a hoarder's trove. I'd guess a couple of tons by weight.
I was really struck by the waste of it all, and it's dramatically altered my perception of owning books.
If you buy too many books, remember - your habits will eventually become somebody else's problem to deal with. You could be doing anything else with the money instead of wasting it on dead trees that somebody will eventually just have to throw away.
This sounds nice, but if the man filled 2500 sq feet with books and magazines and didn't read them, it sounds a bit more like an episode of Hoarders and it's certainly not healthy.
Maybe you're right. But it would have been better for all of his family if he'd literally lit that money on fire instead of buying thousands of unread books.
At least then, he wouldn't have left us with a huge problem to deal with in his wake.
I have less than zero sympathy for this sob story, which is exactly appropriately reciprocal to the level of respect and understanding you are granting to your family member.
There is absolutely no way to turn someone else's pile of books that you don't approve of into any kind of harm done to you. Not even through this route of death and bequest.
Sell the house for whatever it fetches wothout laying a finger on it. Then the horrible books are not your problem.
Oh, you want to extract more money from the sale? Or you want to use it yourself? That is still not his obligation. You are essentially saying you wish your parent gave you more, but trying to twist it into somehow they cost you something.
It doesn't help you but perhaps it will help others - I moved recently and had a bunch of "junk" books similar to your grandfathers. By pure happenstance I found out that recyclers love books because they get the highest prices for clean paper in books. They happily showed up - for free - and helped cart out several bookcases of old, obsolete tech books. It was quite a godsend.
The man had a 5-bedroom 2500 sqft house, basically full wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with books and magazines. Most of them were clearly unread.
Getting rid of all of the books was a big effort. Both physically and mentally. Turns out that not too many too many places want to take a bunch of obsolete computer books, and we didn't have the luxury of a couple of years to sell them all on Amazon or something.
It was a burden on all of us. Image a week-long bucket brigade from upstairs and downstairs. Every armful got heavier and heavier.
In the end, most of them went into the dumpster. Probably $100k worth of books purchased over the years, all obsolete and rotting in a hoarder's trove. I'd guess a couple of tons by weight.
I was really struck by the waste of it all, and it's dramatically altered my perception of owning books.
If you buy too many books, remember - your habits will eventually become somebody else's problem to deal with. You could be doing anything else with the money instead of wasting it on dead trees that somebody will eventually just have to throw away.