It's been a pretty rough fortnight with losing my last grandparent after months of battling age (just shy of 92) and the effects of numerous strokes, and a friend that was five years my younger who was taken barely two weeks after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.
Naturally one begins to think about their own mortality and the events after. I don't (but should) have a last will and testament and some final instructions for what to do with me and my stuff. There's nobody in my family or circle of friends that would want my shed toys or even have the foggiest idea as to their value or what to do with them. I've seen a few estate items turn up in the forums with the poster not really knowing what they had. Rather than have them rust away or sold for a song, I'd like to see my gear sold off so the properly valued money could be put to use elsewhere. Besides my shed gear, I own sweet bugger all of anything else - car, clothes, computer and a few boxes of comics pretty much sums it up.
My first thoughts were to leave notes about each tool and machine pertaining to it's age, state, current value and approximate depreciation. Also some instructions about how to use these forums as the first point of call to selling the items as I would trust a lot of you (and similarly minded future members) to pipe up and say something about fair value rather than an estate auctioneer (or whoever would normally take care of such things).
Has anyone in a similar situation to me regarding assets put in place anything specific to help those left behind to move your gear on at the value that it's worth?
Would other prominent forumites offer up some time and knowledge to help the bereaved if it was known they needed a hand? (Not that I'm asking for it.)
It's not a great subject but one that each of us has, or will have to, confront at some stage and I'm all for making it easier on the poor buggers left to deal with my messes.