I grinding down the "collection" of my elderly, hoarder father. Here in California, all this "vintage" stuff is essentially worthless. Not only because there i

I grinding down the "collection" of my elderly, hoarder father. Here in California, all this "vintage" stuff is essentially worthless. Not only because there is no practical use for obsolete tech, but because there are so many other hoards out there. It's a bit like everyone who thought their decades of National Geographic magazines had value, but libraries do not want them because there are so many identical boxes of these left over from estate sales. In many ways, tech is worse. Hoarders think of it as having intrinsic value like precious metals, but I'd say old tech is more like expired canned food. Too many expired goods and not enough interested recipients, since the pre-expiration purpose of the goods is no longer relevant. Roughly speaking, I am sifting large piles into several categories: somewhat contemporary stuff I can donate to a charity who might resell/reuse at least some of it; e-waste and metal I "donate" to a licensed scrapper for proper disposal; batteries and other items I separate and hand over to the county's household hazardous waste handler; recyclable paper and plastic; recordable media I have to at least attempt to erase before figuring out disposal as per above; and landfill for whatever is left. Because he had no inventory, and hoarding seems to be an almost fractal disorder, I feel obligated to carefully sift and break down every item until all hiding places are revealed. I cannot predict when I will come across something in the midst which requires special handling. I wish I had found piles already sorted, so I could have just done the back-breaking work of shifting them out of the house in one heroic push. Instead, I have been forced to become intimate with it all. Now, I have an involuntary hobby to do this a little bit each week, filling the curbside bins and taking the occasional car load to other disposal sites. I have had to remind myself not to "cry over spilled milk" and dwell on the sunk cost of all the unnecessary things he hoarded. It's hard to say how much that money (properly invested) could have gone to supporting his care and quality of life in the end. But it is all a liability to me now, as attempting to recover any value from it would take more of my time and cause more grief than it is possibly worth.