Consoomers / Consoomer Culture - Because if it has a recogniseable brand on it, I’d buy it!

[SpiderBitch]

putting on a show of "nyeh! nyeh! fuck you grandma nyeh! i hatechu! fuck your cups!" is more important than just using them like actual cups, they may not be worth bank but there's always someone looking for it even if just to use it for the intended purpose

Is there always someone looking for it, though?
I go thrifting quite frequently, and at all the thrift stores here generally the same china/cutlery and other such items have been rotting on the shelves since I first walked in years ago, and they probably have a bunch more in boxes sitting in the back.
I wouldn't be surprised if the thrift stores threw away most of the donations themselves because they have no space for it. Finding someone who even wants to take it over for free is easier said than done, too.

Even if they can technically use them, why should someone keep grandmas cups if they ALREADY had more than enough perfectly usuable plates, cups and cutlery themselves to begin with?
I don't know anyone that doesn't already have a full set made of the same materials as grandmas set except with less lead and cadmium paint.

We kept our grandmas shit, and it has been rotting in a box in the attic since she died over a decade ago because we dont need it, no one else we offered it to (for free) wants it, and even the thrift stores are hesitant to take it over.
Everything we could actually find a use for and sentimental items never entered the box to begin with.

Generally your imaginary tale of a big vindictive rebellious show over cups is very weird and not actually something ive ever seen happen with any family, especially as most dead grannies have multiple kids and even more grandkids. If none of her almost 20 grandkids want her cups leading to them donated and/or thrown away, that's unfortunate, but not malicious.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

Is there always someone looking for it, though?

yes

don't ask stupid questions, you like vriska
if that's not proof there's an asker for any ol shit i don't know what is

 

[Randy Butternubs]

World Book and Britannica cost a couple thousand back in the day. IMO encyclopedias should never be thrown away. They contain knowledge that the Internet doesn't have and I don't think that should be lost.

Collier's and Funk & Wagnalls are trash though.

There are exceptions of course! It does depend on the set. Also, just for clarification, when my job recycles books, we have a partnership with a company that specializes in pulping books in particular, so they don't go in the ground and get a second lease on life. It's fun to see the stat breakdowns when they send them to us.

these are the whiny bastards that complain about the environment but they refuse to use old, reliable and reusable things because putting on a show of "nyeh! nyeh! fuck you grandma nyeh! i hatechu! fuck your cups!" is more important than just using them like actual cups, they may not be worth bank but there's always someone looking for it even if just to use it for the intended purpose and tossing it all out is in most cases just a big rebellious show, like getting an ugly haircut as soon as you leave for college
i don't care how you paint it, i can't respect that sort of wastefulness

I will admit, I did get every single one of my pet food bowls and water dishes from thrift stores. I'm pretty sure they were all grannies favorites at some point in their lifetime. Any bowl or cup would've sufficed tho.

Is there always someone looking for it, though?
I go thrifting quite frequently, and at all the thrift stores here generally the same china/cutlery and other such items have been rotting on the shelves since I first walked in years ago, and they probably have a bunch more in boxes sitting in the back.
I wouldn't be surprised if the thrift stores threw away most of the donations themselves because they have no space for it. Finding someone who even wants to take it over for free is easier said than done, too.

Even if they can technically use them, why should someone keep grandmas cups if they ALREADY had more than enough perfectly usuable plates, cups and cutlery themselves to begin with?
I don't know anyone that doesn't already have a full set made of the same materials as grandmas set except with less lead and cadmium paint.

We kept our grandmas shit, and it has been rotting in a box in the attic since she died over a decade ago because we dont need it, no one else we offered it to (for free) wants it, and even the thrift stores are hesitant to take it over.
Everything we could actually find a use for and sentimental items never entered the box to begin with.

Nailed it to the wall. When I worked at a few thrift stores, the old people donating usually had tried to just give it away, but found no one had any interest except the thrift store. When the store is seeing their 8th set of nice plates and "As seen on TV" chotchkies, they have to make the decision that they can't sell those fast enough and have to dispose of some of them. Especially since, like you mentioned, that kind of stuff just sits and sits and sits until it's replaced by a newer filler product that will just sit and sit and sit.

putting on a show of "nyeh! nyeh! fuck you grandma nyeh! i hatechu! fuck your cups!" is more important than just using them like actual cups, they may not be worth bank but there's always someone looking for it even if just to use it for the intended purpose and tossing it all out is in most cases just a big rebellious show, like getting an ugly haircut as soon as you leave for college
i don't care how you paint it, i can't respect that sort of wastefulness

Your tale of people constantly going "f you gram gram" makes it sounds like you're the old person and you've offered your 50 year old son your box of socks that you've been wearing since 1934 that have a bunch of holes in them but because there's still some fabric there, his feet should be sort of warm and he shouldn't complain and just use them anyways.

The person old people imagine in their heads that walks up and goes "Holy shit I've been looking for this" chances are, is just made up in their head to cope with the fact they bought and surrounded themselves with stuff nobody wants.

One man's trash is another man's treasure, for sure, but sometimes one man's trash is just trash all around.

 

[SpiderBitch]

yes

Well, as far as ive seen, the demand for cheap secondhand household items is significantly smaller that the sheer amounts left by all the dead grandmas.
A lot of thriftstores put a stop on accepting household items for months on end.

Granted, in my area, a lot of grannies were renting their homes, which leads to their offspring having to clean out the houses asap so they can let a new renter move in, which leads to very, very, very frequent mass household item donations, maybe the need is very different in areas where home ownership is more common .

Many of those mass donations ALREADY including a bunch of plastic & mass produced junk, because the elderly are also not immune to consooming useless plastic junk.

A lot of older people are also addicted to temu hauls.



https://www.dailydot.com/pop-culture/temu-victims-parents-shopping-fails/

The women of yesteryear wouldve consoomed just as hard if they couldve consoomed this easily.
Hell, I know multipe silent genners who struggle with this or did when they were alive.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

X

If you honest to god wanna tell me there is not an ubundance of young people who treat the very notion of having to show any ounce of politeness to their elders as the 3rd shoah and don't get an overwhelming orgasmic pleasure out of making a scene of doing things they fantasize about gram gram turning in her grave over as a form of rebellion, you have either not interacted with teens and 20 year olds since the 1980's, or you're one of them

passive aggressive behavior like that is the "leaving home and immediately becoming a whore" for people who couldn't cut it as a whore

 

[SpiderBitch]

If you honest to god wanna tell me there is not an ubundance of young people who treat the very notion of having to show any ounce of politeness to their elders as the 3rd shoah and don't get an overwhelming orgasmic pleasure out of making a scene of doing things they fantasize about gram gram turning in her grave over as a form of rebellion, you have either not interacted with teens and 20 year olds since the 1980's, or you're one of them

Your made up story is completely retarded, not because teens and young adults aren't little shits, but because 99% of the time those are not even the people deciding what happens to grandmas belongings, but their 50 yo parents, aunts and uncles actually cleaning out the house and making the decisions on what to donate/throw away. At most, they ask their kids if they want grandmas (x), and if they dont want it either, into the donation box or trash it goes.

If a teen is somehow completely in charge of deciding what shit gets thrown away then thats a problem, and likely a failure on the parents part.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

Your made up story is completely retarded, not because teens and young adults aren't little shits, but because 99% of the time those are not even the people deciding what happens to grandmas belongings, but their 50 yo parents, aunts and uncles actually cleaning out the house and making the decisions on what to donate/throw away.

there is no retort less helpful and more disingenuous than
>no this just doesn't happen

 

[moocow]

there is no retort less helpful and more disingenuous than
>no this just doesn't happen

It's probably happened a few times. Some people are just cunts filled with hatred. Their whole existence is misery and suffering, so their karma is instant and forever enduring. I hope you aren't going down that path. You sound bitter and you should try to steer away from that.

The more common reaction to grandma handing their grandkids a box full of crap is "oh thanks, grandma! This is great! We have a perfect spot for [this random thing] in the dining room!" to make grandma feel good. Then they load the box in their car, and once they get home, they sift through the box for anything genuinely useful or sentimental, and throw the rest in the nearest dumpster. If they think grandma might come visit some day, they'll hang onto one trinket, keep it in a closet, and put it up on prominent display when she visits. It takes next to no effort or space and a bit of lip service to make an old person feel valued, loved and welcome. Non-cunts appreciate the easy win.

Most people are minimally courteous enough to understand the "grandma gives grandkids useless trinket and they pretend to love it" is as much a rite of passage for grandma (passing something down to her progeny) as it is for themselves (their progenitor passing something of (possibly imaginary) value down to them). It's a trivial gesture on both sides but is an experience the older generation has earned and the younger one is still working to earn (and should want). Nobody wants to die feeling like nobody cared about their life or anything they did with it.

 

[Cuntspiracy Man]

It's probably happened a few times. Some people are just cunts filled with hatred. Their whole existence is misery and suffering, so their karma is instant and forever enduring. I hope you aren't going down that path. You sound bitter and you should try to steer away from that.

The more common reaction to grandma handing their grandkids a box full of crap is "oh thanks, grandma! This is great! We have a perfect spot for [this random thing] in the dining room!" to make grandma feel good. Then they load the box in their car, and once they get home, they sift through the box for anything genuinely useful or sentimental, and throw the rest in the nearest dumpster. If they think grandma might come visit some day, they'll hang onto one trinket, keep it in a closet, and put it up on prominent display when she visits. It takes next to no effort or space and a bit of lip service to make an old person feel valued, loved and welcome. Non-cunts appreciate the easy win.

Most people are minimally courteous enough to understand the "grandma gives grandkids useless trinket and they pretend to love it" is as much a rite of passage for grandma (passing something down to her progeny) as it is for themselves (their progenitor passing something of (possibly imaginary) value down to them). It's a trivial gesture on both sides but is an experience the older generation has earned and the younger one is still working to earn (and should want). Nobody wants to die feeling like nobody cared about their life or anything they did with it.

exactly
i'm not saying you have to want, need or use whatever granny gives you, but i loathe the people who hate the very notion of having to put minimal effort into loving and caring for the *people themselves* who give you this stuff to so much as pretend to care for it, that they keep finding any way possible to wriggle their way out of saying "gee, thanks grandma"

 

[moocow]

exactly
i'm not saying you have to want, need or use whatever granny gives you, but i loathe the people who hate the very notion of having to put minimal effort into loving and caring for the *people themselves* who give you this stuff to so much as pretend to care for it, that they keep finding any way possible to wriggle their way out of saying "gee, thanks grandma"

If it's any consolation, people like that tend to live very lonely lives. Nobody wants to be around someone who treats their own family that way.

 

[Sexy Peach Emoji]

Isn't Hawaii outrageously expensive?

It's fairly expensive. You have a tourist industry, so you have to avoid the tourist areas, and it's an island in the middle of the pacific, so everything not grown/raised/ caught there has to be shipped or flown in. It's beautiful though, and I love the weather. I wouldn't retire there though.

 

[John Titor]

Most people are minimally courteous enough to understand the "grandma gives grandkids useless trinket and they pretend to love it" is as much a rite of passage for grandma (passing something down to her progeny) as it is for themselves (their progenitor passing something of (possibly imaginary) value down to them). It's a trivial gesture on both sides but is an experience the older generation has earned and the younger one is still working to earn (and should want). Nobody wants to die feeling like nobody cared about their life or anything they did with it.

Pretty sure this was a gag on The Simpsons and South Park where Grampa gave his old junk to his family as an inheritance which they immediately pawn and Stan's grandpa gave him a brooch he bought off a shopping network trying to make it sound like an heirloom.

 

[Lady Bizness]

My husband has this stupid crafty (but obviously mass produced) art piece his mom gave (forced upon) him. I could live with it, but it is tacky. Sentimental value to mother in law. He keeps it in the basement. It's in the living room right now. MIL must be coming over.

 

[NoReturn]

Isn't Hawaii outrageously expensive?

Yes, also they hate you if you're anyone except a native islander, and even then sometimes they hate you.
Even then, though, some Boomers (and even younger) will ignore this because they are so fixated on the idea of living in a warm island paradise.
See also @Scuffed Marisa's comment:

The Boomer generation simply has no sense of what is valuable and what is not, and as they age they tend to piss away anything worthwhile and accumulate worthless junk. This is without going into the whole thing of them selling their homes and pushing their children and grandchildren into generational poverty.

It's pretty easy for them to get to: "Why should I keep the family home? It wasn't my home growing up! I bought a home as an adult, and so can my kid. If I move, I can be somewhere warmer. Sure it may be a smaller place, but my child isn't entitled to a house." and you can even kind of understand the rationale, but it betrays a lack of understanding (or care) about how the world works now.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Maybe I was lucky but I kept the vast majority of my grandparents' things. Only got rid of most shoes and clothes. Also grandparents wanted to have all the inheritance issues sorted out and signed their homes over to their kids long time before death.

 

[NoReturn]

Maybe I was lucky but I kept the vast majority of my grandparents' things. Only got rid of most shoes and clothes. Also grandparents wanted to have all the inheritance issues sorted out and signed their homes over to their kids long time before death.

You're lucky. It sounds like you have a good family.

 

[Scuffed Marisa]

at least the stuff older gens collected actually keeps, and i still can't respect the people who just toss it in the bin
even giving it away for free if you might as well be rid of it is better, and these are the whiny bastards that complain about the environment but they refuse to use old, reliable and reusable things because putting on a show of "nyeh! nyeh! fuck you grandma nyeh! i hatechu! fuck your cups!" is more important than just using them like actual cups, they may not be worth bank but there's always someone looking for it even if just to use it for the intended purpose and tossing it all out is in most cases just a big rebellious show, like getting an ugly haircut as soon as you leave for college
i don't care how you paint it, i can't respect that sort of wastefulness

within the same amount of time everything this generation has amassed will be plastic goop clogging the wheels of a forklift somewhere, nothing remaining but the metal that makes up the chinky dinky cheap LED lights inside

You're way off the mark. Boomers and people in general leave behind maybe 1% of stuff that's usable, the rest is several sets of cheap plates, cups and cutlery that nobody wants, needs or has ever been used but was bought because grandma liked the cheap designs and fat little angels. Anyone older can testify that there was never a moment in time when cutlery, plates and cups were such a huge fucking issue that they had to rely on hand-me-downs or mercy-plates from someone. In equal measure everyone older (and it seems lots of people in the last few replies) can testify that every antique store and online auctions are filled to the brim with cheap porcelain nobody wants, needs or can even sell.

Do you know what's the first to go, what boomers sell off first? Actually valuable stuff. My grandmother liquidated all my grandfathers valuable and expensive tools and used the money to buy plastic shit, porcelain shit, and similar worthless trinkets. This has happened decades ago so it's not a recent event for me, but I'm willing to put my nuts on the chopping block and say that a shitload of people reading this have had the same goddamn experience. Boomers leave NOTHING valuable to their progeny. No tools, no art, no durable machines, nothing. Nada. Zip. They immediately sell everything worthwhile to fund their addictions to grandma shit, cruises, casinoes and so on and on, leaving behind nothing but mountains of trash they try to bullshit us into seeing as "heirlooms" while the actual, real, tangible heirlooms were sold off long ago. And again - this process will repeat with my millennial generation. There's hundreds of thousands of people out there pissing away money on plastic funko pop shit, retro consoles, all sorts of meaningless "collectibles" and so on. Only the smart people out there will one day go "Here son, have this Rolex I bought after years of saving" or more realistically something like "Here son, these are my stocks/gold bullion/mint condition WW1 rifle" or something, anything that has actual fucking value.

Also I'm pretty sure that everything Star Wars is rapidly becoming unsellable and worthless, so anyone that wasted their life on 1970s Luke Skywalker shit and so on will soon realize it went from gold to shit. Just a thought.

 

[NoReturn]

This has happened decades ago so it's not a recent event for me, but I'm willing to put my nuts on the chopping block and say that a shitload of people reading this have had the same goddamn experience.

It's true to such a degree that you can find much better quality items places like consignment and secondhand stores even if they pay the seller a token dollar. I've found some great shit at antique stores that do consignment/reselling that are very obviously from estate sales (things like cast iron, multitools, etc.)
There are some regions you can visit where you can even directly compare "this was sold while the owner or their partner was alive" stores to "this is what was there when the family was cleaning out the house" stores and see the difference.

 

[mr_negativity]

When my grandma died I inherited her fry pan.



Actually it is a very awesome fry pan and one of my prized possessions. They used ultra fine grain sand on the cooking surface. It's practically smooth as glass. They also took care to make it as thin as possible without cracking. It will outlive me if I take care of it. The modern Lodge brand pans use coarse sand. Today you'd have to buy one of those CNC machined pans and polish it down to equal to what I got.

I have the dishes from most of the years of my childhood. I've lost quite a few of them to breakage, only to buy replacement patterns on ebay. It's not fine china, but the everyday dishes.

Cookware and chinaware passed down does have an emotional connection. Fine china doesn't have much value to Gen X beyond because it was the forbidden dishes only rarely used. However, the bowls that held our alpha bits while we watched Saturday morning cartoons is what we would value, not the expensive stuff locked away in the China cabinet.

 

[Brenda Holiday]

When my grandma died I inherited her fry pan.

View attachment 6328431

Actually it is a very awesome fry pan and one of my prized possessions. They used ultra fine grain sand on the cooking surface. It's practically smooth as glass. They also took care to make it as thin as possible without cracking. It will outlive me if I take care of it. The modern Lodge brand pans use coarse sand. Today you'd have to buy one of those CNC machined pans and polish it down to equal to what I got.

I have the dishes from most of the years of my childhood. I've lost quite a few of them to breakage, only to buy replacement patterns on ebay. It's not fine china, but the everyday dishes.

Cookware and chinaware passed down does have an emotional connection. Fine china doesn't have much value to Gen X beyond because it was the forbidden dishes only rarely used. However, the bowls that held our alpha bits while we watched Saturday morning cartoons is what we would value, not the expensive stuff locked away in the China cabinet.

This is so true. I have three cast irons from the 50s that were my grandmas. They are amazing and I adore them. The last part is especially true, I find myself wishing I still had the plastic cups I used to drink milk or lemonade out of. I have the fine china, but I miss those cups.