My mother is a semi-hoarder (not as bad as on TV, but still not great). My wife has tried to get her to get rid of stuff (nothing valuable), for a long time, but after several emotional sessions ("Mom, that white phone cord is now brown, throw it out."), I've gotten to the point where I've told my wife that Mom is more than 80 years old; life's too short, and I don't want to spend days debating whether to throw junk out. We'll just do it after she goes. My wife reminds me that it's still going to be emotional after Mom goes, and I said I'd rather just deal with my own emotions than dealing with my Mom's emotions over junk.
Then there was my uncle (Mom's brother), who lived pretty far away and whose apartment I hadn't been to in more than 30 years. Uncle was divorced 50+ years ago, and lived alone. When he pashed, we went to his place to see if there was anything we wanted. I opened up his nightstand, saw some envelopes, opened them up … and there were nude pictures of his ex-wife from 50 years ago. They got tossed.
