I loved this article about a Marietta, Ohio Goodwill store that found $1,500 of marijuana hidden inside a large galvanized metal water jug they had received as a donation.

At Bailey Zobel Pilcher, our clients often find themselves having to clean out the home of elderly loved ones. This is a daunting task, fraught with emotion, and usually occurs in a time of crisis. It took my brother and my husband thirteen weeks, two days a week, eight hours a day, to clean out my parents' house when my parents moved into assisted living. I couldn't even go inside. The amount of "stuff" was overwhelming to me. For example, in the garage, which was stuffed to the ceiling, there were 17 broken coffee pots and 12 broken telephones. My Dad was sure that the next coffee pot or telephone that broke could be fixed with a part from a previous one.

When my Aunt Dorothy moved out of her apartment in Jersey City into a nursing home, my brothers found an entire closet full of tubes of toothpaste, brand new, in the box. Many of the tubes were so old they had petrified. Depression babies...

How do you know what to keep? What to throw away? Are your siblings fighting about the contents? Being snide about who is taking what and bringing up that "Mom always did love you more?" Claiming that "Dad told me he wanted me to have that?" It becomes very attractive to want to just throw everything away.

If cleaning out your parents' home becomes overwhelming, know that there are companies that specialize in doing this for you. They do not have years of family dynamics invested in the teacup collection. They know what is valuable and what is not. They have the patience and ability to sell the china and silverware and Lladros that no one in the family wants. We help our clients by giving them referrals to companies such as Creating Divine Order.

We also counsel our clients to pay attention when they are in this situation. Look in the pockets of the clothes and old purses for money. Stick your fingers down the toes of the boots for jewelry. Flip through the books and magazines to see if bearer bonds or stock certificates have been hidden between the pages. Many people stash valuables in the most perplexing places -- such as this galvanized metal water jug donated to Goodwill.

I learned this as a child. My godmother, my father's aunt, lived in New Jersey during the Northeast Blackout of 1965. She was away from her home visiting her second cousin in Bergen County during the power outage. When she returned home several days later, she found that her neighbors, to be helpful, had cleaned out her freezer and refrigerator, and thrown away the spoiled contents. My great-aunt fainted -- she had frozen her jewelry inside ground beef , which she kept in the freezer. When she wanted to wear her jewelry, she would take the ground beef out a couple of days before the event to thaw. Everyone knew this -- except these neighbors. The meat -- and the jewelry -- was gone.  

Merrell Bailey

December 2nd, 2009