More than the average person, I think about what will happen to my stuff after I die. Not the mundane everyday stuff I own like clothes or furniture, but the stuff I really care about — like, the stuff I had sentimental attachments to when I was alive. For example, in my backpack right now I have a “Bend ‘Em” Darth Vader action figure. New, it cost only a couple of bucks. It’s been on every flight I’ve been on over the past 20 years. It means the world to me. When I die, best case scenario, it’ll end up being sold at a garage for a quarter; worst case, and most likely, it’ll end up in the local landfill.<\/p>\n

When you die, sentimentality dies with you.<\/p>\n

Estate sales rekindle these thoughts. Everybody knows “you can’t take it with you,” but estate sales always remind me “somebody else has to deal with it after you shuffle off.” From a logistical standpoint, estate sales make sense — people should keep things with sentimental value and sell what they don’t need. From an emotional standpoint, I’ve never attended one that didn’t feel at least a little bit uncomfortable.<\/p>\n

A saw an ad on Craigslist over the weekend that said “blah blah blah, Commodore computers, blah blah blah.” I can’t imagine needing or buying any more Commodore equipment at this point in my life; I also can’t imagine not going to find out what they had for sale, so that’s what I did.<\/p>\n

The morning was cold and rainy and the drive was just over an hour long. I arrived five minutes after the sale was scheduled to begin and discovered forty cars — mostly pickups and SUVs — had beat me to the punch. <\/p>\n