I kinda thought this would be an article about possessions and a lifetime spent gathering them; what they mean, if anything, and what to do about them as generations change. That to me would make a more interesting read than one that focused on "whether books are still relevant" which was really where this one went.
I'm grappling with the former problem so maybe it's just right there in my consciousness right now. I've got a house full of parental possessions - including hundreds of books collected over a lifetime, and I've got to get rid of them. I love books but just don't have the space for more. The journey is hard and very poignant.
You might find the book 'How to Archive Family Keepsakes' by Denise May Levenick interesting. I bought it myself to read and haven't gotten very far into it yet (always so many distractions), but it seemed like it had some interesting and useful stuff in there.
Part 1's title, for example, is called "I Inherited Grandma's Stuff, Now What?"
My widowed father lives in a 4 bed family home. My widower mother-in-law lives in a 3 bed house with a massive basement. I have a 2 bed apartment that is full already. There isn't any space!
I read something like that recently you might like:
> The great junk transfer is coming. A look at the burden (and big business) of decluttering as Canadians inherit piles of their parents’ stuff. Sorting, storing and disposing of old family belongings will be a labour-intensive challenge in the next decade as baby boomers age.
Here's a sci-fi story about tech-assisted cataloging of parent's stuff
"Using this kind of technology on a living human’s home would
be a gross invasion of privacy. But if you use it in the home of
someone who’s died alone, it just improves a process that was
bound to take place in any event. Working with Infinite Space,
you can even use the inventory as a checklist, value all assets
using current eBay blue-book prices, divide them algorithmically
or manually, even turn it into a packing and shipping manifest
you can give to movers, telling them what you want sent where.
It’s like full-text search for a house."
Doesn't seem like as big of a problem as people make it out to be. You hire a skip and move the vast majority of stuff in to it over a weekend. Maybe garage sale off the stuff that has some value.
I have to question what people are doing where they can fill a whole dumpster with junk every few years. Perhaps buying less crap would be a good start.
If he's that into cuckoo clocks he's probably in touch with other people who share the interest. Talk to him now to find out who those friends are. Those are the people you offer the clocks to.
It also means you get to spend time with your father talking about something he likes. That time together is what you will be thinking about when passing those clocks on.
Contact with his collecting friends is an excellent suggestion.
I'd also recommend considering distributing some of the collection to friends and relatives. Something small like a single cuckoo clock could be a great memento to remember them by. It's not a burden to take one clock the way a whole collection would be, of course people should still be asked if they would like to have it rather than being voluntold.
My great uncle had a wonderful collection of beautiful old hand tools and made a point of distributing a portion of them to his various relatives and friends who had expressed interest. The bulk of the collection went to the relative who was his son in all but fact, but I have some lovely calipers and a handmade hammer that have a cherished place among my tools. Far from a burden, I remember uncle Mac fondly each time I see them while grabbing some pliers or a drill.
My grandmother has made us go around putting sticky notes with our names on all the stuff we want when they downsize or pass. Everything else will go to goodwill or the dump. The secretary desk my grandfather fished out of the dump in the 60s is a hot commodity that everyone is trying to lay claim to.
They're definitely not "small" being wall clocks but the idea of giving away mementos is excellent. I'm not aware of him being member of some circle, formal or informal, understandable when you live in the sticks and don't do much internet either...
I'm grappling with the former problem so maybe it's just right there in my consciousness right now. I've got a house full of parental possessions - including hundreds of books collected over a lifetime, and I've got to get rid of them. I love books but just don't have the space for more. The journey is hard and very poignant.