Clearing Out a Deceased Relative's Home: Cables and 100 Volumes

What We Leave Behind: Cables, Encyclopedias, and 5,000 Pages

A relative dies, their house is peine, and the real inventory of a life is revealed: boxes of cables and plugs, computers from the IBM PC era, floppy disks, cassettes, CDs, vinyl records, slides, analog and digital cameras. Clearing out the home of someone who has passed away has become an exercise in domestic archaeology and an uncomfortable testament to how much we accumulate without realizing it.

The list of items removed from an apartment is almost always the same, only the order changes. And the first discussion isn't sentimental, it's logistical: what to throw away, what to sell, and what to keep just in case it's needed someday.

How Many Cables Can One Accumulate in a Lifetime

Entire boxes in storage. VGA connectors from early 2000s computers, SCART cables, wired mice, chargers for devices that no longer exist. Years of saving 'just in case,' because when you need a cable, you have no choice but to buy a new one. The paradox is precise: you keep what you never use and buy exactly what you threw away.

The rule repeated by those who have been through this is simple: before throwing away, check the price. A lot of 1980s toys can fetch a high price; 8-bit and 16-bit computers and original games maintain a market; IBM PC clones, less so. Most of the rest is worthless. But no one wants to get rid of a device that was once a antiestéticat of engineering. That's where the problem begins.

Paper, That Mountain Appearing in the Background

Then there's the paper. Some people have gone through 4,000 or 5,000 pages with a shredder and still aren't finished. Bank statements, payslips, letters with personal data. They can't just be thrown away, and that stretches the clearing process for months. The scene repeats in any set of dumpsters: piles of books abandoned next to the trash, including complete collections.

And encyclopedias. Dozens of bound volumes, bought on installments when they cost a fortune, now unsellable. Public libraries don't always accept donations. Those who have tried summarize it with a discouraging figure: when an organization takes hundreds of volumes, they end up as paper and cardboard at 0.06 euros per kilo. A collection of over 100 volumes might be offered for 250 euros and remain unwanted. The calculation of real value, volume by volume, yields a surprisingly low result.

Is It Consumerism or Capitalism? The Underlying Debate

Beneath the inventory, an ideological battle emerges. One current argues that accumulation is the trap of consumerism, that excessive consumption that pushes us to buy and discard without thought; another responds that consumption is the engine of any economy and that confusing it with consumerism is a textbook error. Some go further and reduce everything to a slogan: you will own nothing and be happy by 2030. It's a political interpretation offered without proof, which should be taken for what it is, an opinion, not a fact.

What is verifiable is the domestic result of that machinery: full apartments, saturated storage rooms, garages converted into warehouses. And an uncomfortable question, is what we leave behind trash, or are they someone's memories?

Minimalism, Renting, and Moving as a Deterrent

The counterpoint is offered by those who have made detachment a discipline. Some move in an hour because their belongings weigh less than they do, and others admit they would be content with a bow, a dozen arrows, and two lidded containers. It's not just ideology: those who live in rented accommodation accumulate half as much, because sooner or later they have to move everything again. Real estate ownership, unintentionally, is also a storage policy.

And the other extreme. The most expeditious clearing on record ended with three supermarket trolleys full of bags directly to the dumpster, all in one day, with minimal sorting. After that, the rule changed: don't buy, and what you don't use, give away, sell, or throw away.

Material Grief: The Room No One Wants to Open

There comes a point when the inventory stops being logistics and becomes grief. Entering the room where the deceased slept is difficult, even if they didn't die at home; imagining their last months is enough to keep the door closed. A deceased relative's house thus becomes a place with bad vibes for some and a private museum for others, those who keep old pesetas, letters from the war, 1930s radios, and hundred-year-old sewing machines.

This is where any calculation gets stuck. Some see junk; others, the only available biography of someone who can no longer tell their story.