https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/techno-clutter-farnell...

A more funny story:

Back in school, when we were about 17 years old, another kid told me that his Great Uncle had died, and caused him much stress. He'd never met this distant relative, so I enquired, why was he worried? Great Uncle Ben-Ali had named my school-friend, who he'd heard about only through a grandparent but "taken a shine to", as the sole heir and benefactor of his estate - 5 acres of harsh scrub land about 200 miles into the mountains of Morocco containing a shack and two donkeys. He'd received a letter, which was very specific that he was now responsible for the welfare of the donkeys.

Today, this would probably be the start of a great scam, but this was in the 1980s before people "had internet". Many people would have just ignored the whole situation, but my friend, true to his conscience, enlisted Arabic translators and sent letters back and forth to North Morocco for months. Eventually the fate of the donkeys was secured. It was agreed that Ben-Ali's neighbour, whose land they had already wandered on to, would have the donkeys, and the shack would go back to the village/local-government.

The only part I have issue with is when the teacher says “we fix things by "switching them off and on again"” as if that’s a bad thing. I see and agree with your actual point, but a power cycle is generally step one for almost all debugging.

TBH, as an electronics engineer and computer scientist it's the first thing I do too :) I think my point in that article was that we shouldn't teach that it's the _only_ recourse, and after if it still doesn't work then just replace it.

It's still one step better than the wisdom of my Grandmother's generation:

"If it doesn't work bang it once on the top. If it still doesn't work bang it hard on the side twice. If it still doesn't work, call a man."

(The Apple III was a beneficiary https://www.techjunkie.com/apple-iii-drop/ )

If you're not the sysadmin and the debugging relates to a production server, stop power cycling it and causing it to fsck on the way up while I'm trying to actually fix it tho lmao. Bonus points: you're frying all the information I need to actually see what is going wrong, now I'm digging in logs and monitoring graphs hoping to catch a clue

Definitely not something that happened repeatedly this morning, haha

Tell your aunt you need some wires from that old Pentium computer she has, and take it to be recycled.

“Drop in” at your friends on the way to the dump with half a trailer full of rubbish, and ask if they want to fill up the other half for free.

When there is a book market on, visit your friends and take away their old books to go to the market. Boxes of books they don’t really want but which are too “valuable” to throw out.

Tell your friends you are doing a metal recycling run, and does anyone have any old metal that they want gone?

One friend I took 3 or 4 trailer loads of stuff away, mess which was really depressing them, and it has really cheered them up over the long term.

It was an awesome way to build good-will, since the price difference between a 10 and 30 cu.yd dumpster was ~10%. Obviously most of the cost is in the truck roll.

We also did the opposite once: we were demolishing a small vacation home, so we told some of the locals to pick through and take what they wanted. It was funny seeing our kitchen.. but in a different house.

You can clean up, move stuff around, throw things out, get them a better vacuum, set up wifi, get them better lighting, decorate stuff, or whatever you're good at.

It's the same psychological mechanism at play when you can quickly give good advice and plan in other peoples lives but it's harder applying in your own.

I recommend trying to "optimize" your friends or parents homes if they are down / getting old - for me it's about getting rid of or organising their stuff stuff, making it easy to clean, set up good lighting etc. Always respect peoples history and stuff and history of course.

I mostly just end up throwing them away a few at a time.

Still, my household(multigenerational) has too many books, and this is mostly an artifact of a childhood that gave me plenty to read. We even still have the incomplete Funk & Wagnalls encyclopedia picked up from when the school library dumped them.

It'll be the "great book downsizing", for us. Someday. Occasionally I look into scanning the ones I have sentimental value towards, and there are services to do so...but really, that would just displace the problem into "digital junk hoarding". It's hard to let go of things, especially in the gradual way that fits with our waste stream system.

The best tactic I've had to deal with it is to first make an explicit division of space (no piles allowed, at least have a tray or tie the bundle) and then use the divisions to create a ranking mechanism. You don't have to let go of things immediately, but whenever you have a day where you value space over stuff, the low rank stuff can be taken out with minimal ceremony: "thank you very much".

>Listing and selling on eBay

Yeah, unless something is a big ticket item, eBay isn't worth the effort. You used to be able to outsource it to someone for a cut but nothing like that seems to exist any longer.

[1] https://londonist.com/london/books-and-poetry/bookswap_eastc...

One friend showed me a bag with a heap of kiwi fruit fluff they had collected a decade ago. Nothing to see here.

One friend had too many tables, so I thought it might help them to grok the absurdity of that if I gave them a bunch more tables (tables which someone else was discarding): that didn’t work because they now have tables stacked up on one another. Nice enough tables, but I feel bad. Also it is very likely I will help them move . . .

I am semi-retired, but I still need to take care I am not wasting my time.

The free trailer load to the dump is fun mental jujutsu because dumping stuff isn’t cheap: someone who just can’t pass up a bargain trying to choose stuff to throw out for free! Needs a believable reason why it is “free” e.g. neighbour already paid me, or work is paying for it.

I haven’t done the book one exactly, but I have done similar.

Counted 10 chairs in one room - they are couple of 70 year olds that never have guests.

7 mops in bathroom. About 20 huge bowls in one of kitchen drawers.

I'm just trying to offload the excess to some storage to make their (and mine) lives easier, but oh boy.

Have you already refurbished a couple tables just for fun? It might make sense to flip some furniture as a hobby.

If you haven't, this is a recipe for being that guy with too many tables, whose friends drive by with a half-filled trailer and ask, politely, if maybe they want to throw something away today.

A light dose of psychedelics does wonders for me in this regard. I’ll suddenly look at my place and see as if for the first time that thing that’s been laying around for weeks. “Oh, I put it there because I was anxious for this and that. Of course that’s not its place. Let’s move it where it belongs.” I love my mostly empty house, there’s so much space to move around and breathe.

Or at least keep it in a steady state past some point. I've been in my current house for 25 years and I find that I need to allocate time now and then to go through and clean out some clothes, books, electronics, etc. Especially with a fair bit of storage space it can be tempting to just toss something in the attic because it's easier than getting of it--especially for bulkier items.

It helps them declutter and lets me make sure they don't throw any of it away. I can always dispose of it later if I decide it's not useful.

I bet they though the same.

My mom passed away unexpectedly and in her sleep last year. She had been depressed for half a year prior because she had lost her spouse to cancer. She had not yet gone through their items.

So between the household results of half a year of depression and two lifetimes worth of stuff it was so overwhelming that I only believed we could get through it all because there was no other outcome to believe was possible. My aunt has experience with this and she flew home to help. It took us about a month.

And now I have half a basement room, not even 5% of the things they’d had, waiting to be packed up and shipped to me. It was all stuff that at the time I could not imagine getting rid of.

Now, I know that I will have a ton of re-sorting ahead of me because after a year has passed I doubt I’ll want to keep all of that stuff.

It’s so easy to project meaning onto items.

In the last few years of her life, she became very concerned with the work her children and grandchildren would have to undertake to clean out her house. She went through and added a note on a sticker on the backs of things for who she though should get them.

But in the end it was easy. My grandmother created an order of magnitude more grief for herself worrying about cleaning up after her than actually existed. And I wish that she hadn't had that burden on her.

Most of her children and grandchildren didn't have any sentimental connection to all of the things, and those of us that did went through and grabbed what we wanted. Once that was done, we called Goodwill and they came and cleaned out the rest.

Sure, you might bear it willingly out of that love, but you don't have to like a new tedious, dirty, frustrating project just because you love(d) the person who left it to you.

To take it a step further, the junk is usually a result of your loved one's insecurities and fears. It's largely a reminder of a burden you wish they hadn't even had to carry. Now that you have to carry the results of it, it makes sense just to want to be rid of it all.

Honestly the way I see it my mum knows me well enough. If I'm instructed to do anything like a tidyup it will be done quickly, efficiently, and without emotion.

Take a picture of your nostalgia items and bin them, the emotion is in the memory anyway. You'll look at it just as infrequently but at least it's only taking up bytes now.

Extract the useful-to-you stuff and get someone to cart everything else away with a "you get everything for £500 if you take it ALL away" deal.

If she doesn't want this I imagine my sister will be in charge, haha.

For me, it will only be a sad single day project as part of the grieving process. Hundreds of hours is just a totally different story.

My partner has inherited a big project and collection that meant everything to their Dad. He would always say, I want this taken on etc. But when push comes to shove, the prospect/reality of inheriting someone else's hobby/business, which requires years and years of work with no return just feels more and more bizarre and absurd. But you feel indebted and horrible not carrying through with wishes.

Never mind a pile of junk. You can just inherit a big pile of problems.

People forget that they kept this "junk" for a reason. When you tell them to get rid of it or call it junk, you are insulting them, not their possession. It doesn't matter that you think their reason is silly. They would think a lot of your stuff is silly too. It is so sad that we've lost (almost ?) all ability for empathy. We have become so selfish and it is sad.

Of course 80% of it is junk, but 80% of everything I save is junk too, so I can hardly blame them for it.

My dad recently threw out a lot of his old school stuff that we’d gone through and looked at a few times during various instances of cleanup over the course of my life, and I think I was more sad than him.

I imagine he has all that stuff somewhere inside his head still, but to me the only tangible remains of the time when my dad was a boy/young adult have disappeared.

My parents, when they were young and carefree and enjoying life, used to make mix tapes. Loads of them. There was something almost magical about being able to listen to them in my old car, and experience a little window into what they used to listen to etc.

Sadly my car went to the great scrapyard in the sky and now I hold onto a plethora of cassette tapes I'm unsure I'll ever listen to. Silly really.

My folks have a rack of VHS cassettes of their performances in plays, which they ripped to DVD at some point. I haven't started watching them but I'm lucky to have them.

Doing it while they are alive is important because you get to here to story behind it. Without that it’s just unlabeled and soon to be forgotten junk.

My siblings and I have been begging and pleading with them to sort this out for the past 20 years. We have offered to help. But they haven't, as said parent is "throw themselves in front of the car if we try to leave with anything" emotionally attached to this stuff and somehow maintains an inventory of everything, including how they bought it and how it made them feel.

Now they are getting old and infirm and are barely able to afford the house that they are renting, let alone put in the effort to clean it up. My siblings and I are going to be stuck with a quagmire where they only solution is to pay a professional to come over and clean out the house, and that will not be cheap.

Our neighbour died and the kids just paid not much for house clearance, which was a side line of the funeral parlor. For them it's a gamble as to whether they will find something of worth to make it worthwhile.

I have another slowly dementing relative with mobility issues. They need space, but will not give up piles of plates, and four knive blocks that litter their precious kitchen space. They don't even cook. It's impossible, and when I dare to help, it is just met with derision and scorn.

I chucked ten back issues of phone books/directories and have never lived it down.

Importantly, if trash is a bulk operation, then the cost difference between keeping things versus throwing them out becomes more pronounced, earlier on.

I'm sure most of us have that experience of figuring out that our stuff isn't going to fit in the truck and/or car and all of a sudden things we really intended to keep become negotiable. Problem is that there are probably three other things you'd be more willing to part with, but they're already in boxes in the truck.

They're getting on, and are looking at selling a treasured holiday property in a warm country - I originally thought it was due to not feeling able, or wanting to, visit - but it's because when they die they're worried about me and my brothers having to sort out marketing it and paying the inheritance tax.

I pointed out that's not a burden, it'll be fine, we're all adults and can sort things like that out - only sell if it they want to spend the money on visiting other places, or doing other things, not because they worry about being a burden after they're gone.

I have this issue currently in my home. My wife does not want to go through anything but will not let me touch it either. "no dear my shoebox sized matchbox cars collection is not worth anything to me and I am not going to play with them lets get rid of it". I leave it be, as is, as it is at least in easy to get rid of boxes now. That was at least a step forward. My parents have filled every possible storage area in their house top to bottom with stuff. Some of it has not seen the light of day in 40 years. It is at least 'neat' but it will be an interesting challenge to pull it all out and sort it. I leave that one be as they have filled the storage areas and they have no more room to still be neat and tidy but grab more items.

I've been worrying lately about leaving too much stuff for my kids to deal with, but so far it's mostly things that they left in their rooms when they moved out. I'm trying to keep from acquiring more stuff.

The top-level article is unbelievably crass.

I have had to deal with this. Sorting through an entire lifetime's worth of knick-knacks, papers, Christmas cards, plaques commemorating achievements and milestones that probably wouldn't even make sense to a twenty-year-old, all of it.

Sure, it was hard. It takes time.

But so did changing my diapers. And dealing with infant-me crying through the night. And watching toddler-me be picky and waste food, which is a big deal when you get most of your groceries from a charity. All the scrounging and saving for Christmas presents, all the hours spent answering every question that I had as a boy, all the trips together to play in the snow during the winter...

Those things took time, too.

That sounds like a square deal to me.

What's unbelievably crass is the idea that children are obliged to respect and sift through gigantic heaps of stuff just because their parents had some emotional connection to some small parts of it - because most of it is guaranteed to be absolutely useless junk they did not actually value but merely couldn't bring themselves to throw away because of hoarding instincts.

The idea that this obligation is some kind of way to repay for what the parents did for the children is completely absurd and idiotic. It does nothing for your parents.

If you want to repay them, spend time with them. Do something for them which they actually experience.

When your parents are dead, sorting through their stuff out of a sense of obligation is basically self-castigating for your failure to do the above. Sure, if you enjoy it, if it helps you deal with the loss, do it. But not because you feel you have to.

Thank you for saying this. I can't believe the points people are making here. Your parents are already dead at this point. Of course it does nothing for them. Taking care of them while they're still alive does something for them, but once they're dead nothing can ever affect them again.

I think it's written as an ad for junk removal services. The goal is for the reader to see the task as an overwhelming burden to be outsourced.

When she died she left one small box and $90k. We did not have to do a thing.

Like the folks in the article, most of what my relatives considered valuable wasn't, by and large, I only kept little worthless trinkets. Like folks in the article, some of my cousins got weird and fought over the stuff, but for me, it's just stuff, and I've got too much of that already.

Having cleared out 3 parents and a grandparents house, it gives a very stark vision of the destiny of my "stuff". Simply, the bulk of it is going into a landfill.

I have no children, I don't think anyone is really going to be interested much in the pictures of my cats. Or my family. Or my parents. Or any of it.

So, long term, it's all for naught. No museum for us, no trust to maintain an estate for strangers to pay tickets and walk through to take photos for their homes.

But that doesn't mean tossing it away now. Or ever. I'd like to hope I pass surrounded by my home and memories, rather than a sterile empty box already conveniently cleaned out for whoever becomes my estate administrator (whether it's a friend, or some complete stranger).

That said, if you have a collection of anything you deem of value, and you care that it does not end up in a landfill, you'd be wise to distribute it yourself while you can. Otherwise those years of Slurpee cups, Pez dispensers, collectible cereal boxes, etc. will not be cared for properly.

I see this all the time on vintage computer forums. Someone with an estate of stuff they "think" is "worth something" and want to dispose of. Meanwhile, there's always some young Indy posting "that belongs in a museum!" and "don't sell it to those vultures on eBay, they'll just part it out!".

"Well, perhaps, but if it's not out of the house by Friday, it's going to a landfill."

When clearing out an estate house, most people don't have a lot of time to do it, much less deal with it properly. It's one thing if your loved one is nearby, but quite different if you live far away. I had to clear out my fathers house. I live on the West Coast, he lived on the East Coast. There were a lot of mementos in there, things that have been part of my entire life. I even found the TRS-80 that I cut my teeth on in high school, but boxing it up, shipping it home, just wasn't practical.

I had a service come in, we cleared it out, I took the important papers and a few nicknacks. The rest they hauled off to auction, and that was that. I was done in 2 days and on a plane home. Just a stark reality.

So, anyway, keep your stuff. Enjoy it. Get more stuff if that suits you. Clutter is its own thing, and thats different. Just know that at some point, someone is going to come along and most of those things will be meaningless to them, and they'll treat it that way.

Another example. There is a house in Pasadena, the Gamble House. Craftsman home to nth degree, very well preserved. Visitors look upon it in wonder today (I certainly did). The key point is that it's not like this was the only house done like this. Several houses were done, by "important figures" in the field: architects, artisans, etc.

But, in the end, those houses were sold to...people who wanted a house. A roof, kitchen, bed and bathrooms. They weren't looking for a museum, or an art piece. Many of those houses were torn down, remodeled, etc. "OH NO!" some may exclaim, but, that's just the truth of it. Like movie makers crashing classic cars, people view things differently.

It's just a house, they're just cars.

I'll be quite happy to spend a modicum of effort sorting through material possessions when the time comes, if it means they get to spend just one extra minute creating happiness and joy with their grandchildren.

When you fill your house with it, to the point where you're a hoarder and can't see your floors and walls, that's a health hazard that attracts dirt, rot, and pests.

Lots of people never do it once in their whole life. There's a world of optimization levels between "randomly doing things" and "min-maxing life". There's a huge-ass chunk of people who never leave the 0-optimization level of randomly doing things.

My father hoarded all manner of stuff in the garage. It took me days of work to clear it out. And yet I basically understood why each thing was saved.

That chunk of metal was used to repair the car when the front quarter panel rusted from salt. That brass got brazed onto that fixture. Those were the washers for the kitchen sinks. That leather chunk repaired his briefcase. That stuff was used to fence in the garden. That stuff was used to stake the tomato plants. He held onto furniture from my room until I was out of grad school and needed it. etc.

We flat out didn't have the money when I was growing up to just buy stuff from a big box store (and they didn't really exist yet). If we didn't have the material, it didn't get fixed.

A lot of children didn't grow up like this. None of the younger generation in my family want any of the furniture. They have the disposable cash from their parents that they can buy something "new". I would have killed at their age for the stuff I now throw out. C'est la vie.

Lots of people downsize before retiring because they don't want to be encumbered by a bunch of junk. It's a lot of work to live in a house surrounded by stuff. It's work to maintain the stuff, it makes it harder to clean, you have to have a larger living space to house it, etc. All of these things are harder on the elderly once they can't move around or do physical work as easily anymore.

It's also not just parents to children. Parents don't typically pass away at once. Often enough it's one spouse leaving a pile of their things for their partner to live with. That can be a weighty reminder of grief and once they pass getting rid of any of their things can be too emotionally heavy to cope with.

I've inherited my share of obsolete tools, including but certainly not limited to the above examples.

I like the connection to previous generations, and remembering these people by using 'obsolete' tools passed down to me.

On the other side, as long as it's something brand-name like Bosch, these things are built to last - and there are still shops around selling new battery packs for them (or you can replace the cells yourself - no fancy BMS required like with modern lithium batteries and no risk of things exploding or going up in blazes if you mess something up!). I'm still using power tools from my grandfather, meanwhile a friend recently complained to me that one of his "new" drills broke less than two weeks in his house renovation.

The thing is, what you can buy in construction stores these days is optimized to last for the two years warranty period aka six or seven times of being used. Keep that "old" stuff, it will likely outlast you. And if you go and buy lithium-based tools, please buy brand name (=Makita) and don't buy knock-off batteries. These are fire hazards.

ETA: The worst thing you can do with NiCd packs is using them while they are nearly empty or squeezing out that last bit of power. That will drive one of the cells into reverse charge and by then it's effectively forever toast [1].

[1] https://www.icmm.csic.es/jaalonso/velec/baterias/aboutn~1.ht...

This is probably better described as "not from an algorithmically generated name on Amazon", I think. Makita is great (I have their track saw, it's amazing)--but so are DeWalt, Milwaukee, Bosch, Festool, Metabo HPT (formerly Hitachi), and a bunch of others. Even the relatively "budget" flavors of those (Craftsman for DeWalt/SBD, Ridgid/AEG and Ryobi for Milwaukee/TTG) are solid tools these days; Ryobi still has its reputation from the days before they went neon green, but you'll see professionals using them these days because the battery compatibility guarantee is valuable. Even some of the more ancillary brands you'll see out there, like the new cordless Skil stuff (made by Chervon, who own the EGO line of garden power tools) are quite reliable; I have DeWalt and Makita stuff in my shop, but Skil's 12V tools live in the house and are fantastic.

More important than the brand name is usually the product tier, which is related but not distinct from the brand. Most of the brands above sell cheap tools, often as part of a set, and they're value-engineered until they scream. A bottom-tier DeWalt and a bottom-tier Makita and a low/mid-tier Ryobi probably aren't that different in terms of reliability, nor would the higher tiers of the above. (With some occasional exceptions; the DeWalt oscillating tool they currently sell is the best one I've ever used from any brand, with affordances that I appreciate more. Apparently they've sold particularly good ones for a while. But a drill's a drill, mostly.)

Power tools above the basement-tier have just all gotten really good in a relatively short period of time. Lemons exist for sure (though every time I hear about somebody breaking a drill during something as relatively easy as a house renovation I find myself asking whether they'd bought the cheapest one they could, as before), but overall? We're at a point where you can even make a decent argument for a Harbor Freight blue-flavored cordless set. I wouldn't, because old habits die hard, but you could. And whatever you buy is probably lasting two decades and not costing you a whole heck of a lot.

Agreed about the batteries, though. Don't buy cheap batteries.

I'm also still not totally sold on cordless tools. I've found corded tools generally much easier to repair. Extension cords are cheaper than batteries, and for my typical applications they're essentially interchangable.

There are few tools I wouldn't rather have cordless, though. Corded drills don't step to an impact driver for screw-driving (the only corded drill I have is a low-speed drill/mixer). Cords on an angle grinder or a jigsaw or the like get in the way more than they help. About the only corded hand tools I have are routers, and I wish my track saw was corded mostly so as to be able to pair the dust extractor with it (but I use the track saw outside a lot too, so it's a wash). All the corded tools in my shop have been retrofitted with either a Festool pigtail or a NEMA L5 locking connector to not have to deal with cords on the tool, and that helps, but it's still not great.

Whitworth wrenches, sockets, taps, and dies. My dad had a British motorcycle shop around 1980 and I'm pretty sure there is still some of this in his tool boxes in the garage.

Homemade jigs whose purpose you can't even figure out.

I think the dominant category would just be extra or broken or cheap tools that aren't worth hanging on to. For some reason I have like four stubby Phillips #1 screwdrivers. Cheap hatchets with broken handles. Mushroomed lead mallets. A whole drawer of dull drill bits.

Those are one reason I've never yet had a British or German car, though I do have one with a British-derived engine and a German fuel injection system. (I'll have to remember to pass on all the custom tools when I get rid of the car. The chances are slim to none that I'll ever own another one.)

They also work in tighter spots than an electric drill. There's usually less bulk off the axis in at least one direction, generally opposite the crank. If you're in a corner, you're usually boned though.

The drills that are guaranteed to be trash in 20 years are the battery ones. I have a set and love them for when I need to drill more than a couple holes, but I have no illusions that I'll be passing them down to anybody because the batteries will be unavailable.

They're useful for very exact/delicate work, quiet drilling, and for getting into awkward places where an electric drill doesn't fit.

The useless tools might have been a treasure trove to the right person.

I'd love to go through all those "useless" tools.

Oh no, Dad's old all-steel table saw that was designed and built to be repaired, and which has the same tolerances as a "precision tool" today, doesn't have bluetooth to pair with your iPhone? Guess you'll just have to toss it, then.

Although a riving knife — which I wish that I had known about when I was younger - shouldn’t be that hard to add.

A riving knife that doesn't go up and down with the blade is just a pain in the ass that gets removed the first time you aren't making a through cut and rarely gets reinstalled.

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4CuchotcM_4 If you've never seen the inside of a Unisaw, there's a lot of parts in that video that weren't there when the saw left the Delta factory. Even if you mass-produced a kit, it would require reworking some of the original parts, possibly at machinist level tolerances.

https://youtu.be/3LB8wtA9LwU?t=265

He prefers 80+ year old American chisels due to quality of steal. "The older the better".

But anyway, just to confirm, I did an ebay search and top of the line Japanese chisel set is listed for $8.5k. I was thinking "highly prized" but wrote "highly priced", but I think it can stand.

Every once in a while you spot a good one before someone else does (pincers, a good vintage cast-iron hacksaw frame for €5, a pristine sheet metal clamp for €1), but most of it is crap.

Which does make me wonder where all the good tools go.

Now I'm imagining tool companies sending people around to garage sales and estate sales to buy up good used tools to landfill them so that they can sell not so good new tools.

I consider my petrol mower to be obsolete - but I can't justify replacing it with an electric/battery one when it functions fine.

Found one of these cleaning an old science lab, was very confused by what it was initially.

Wonder what tools will look like in 1k years…

Yeah, sure, it’s a gift I can give. But also, it took valuable time away from other care I could have given, not to mention the time it took away from my own family and work.

Overall, it’s a consumption problem that everyone should address routinely. We as a society would benefit from editing our own lives from time to time, and make this burden less for all parties involved.

This is contextual per family; but absolutely not. There are parents who make it known to their children that they were never wanted so when a child goes no-contact, the onus of cleaning up after them post mortem can be handled by someone else.

This is on point. Its hard to feel empathy over your age especially when you are young. By young i mean under 40's or even 50's.