Dear Eric: My wife and I uprooted from our rural community and bought a home to be nearer our grown children who had both settled near the city. Soon after, our son and his family of four and a dog lost their housing as their rental situation failed after the landowner passed away.
Of course, we took them in and several months later they found a new situation and moved out. The trouble is they didn’t take all their stuff and after nine months they seem unable, even unwilling to do so. Half of my two-car garage is full and a defunct and non-maintained stand-up swimming pool is an eyesore in my yard.
Each effort I have made to discuss this results in me being the bad guy. How can I convince them they are not welcome to use my property as their storage?
– Confounded
Dear Confounded: Send them a bill for storage or give them a deadline.
This won’t keep you from being painted as the bad guy, but it will get your garage back. It sounds like they’re taking advantage of you a bit. And perhaps they are genuinely at a loss as to what they should do for storage solutions. But if they refuse to figure it out with you, or propose alternatives, you’re left with little recourse.
I’m presuming you’ve already talked to them about finding a local storage unit for their things. If not, that’s a good place to start. If you’re so inclined, you might even offer to help them with the cost. But you’ve already let them live rent-free, in addition to holding their belongings for nine months, so unless the situation is really dire, there doesn’t seem to be a reason to extend your generosity.
Should they opt not to move the items, then you have to decide what you can get rid of without causing irreparable strife in your family. (So, don’t throw out baby books, please). Perhaps you work piecemeal, starting with the pool, for instance. If you tell them that you need it out of your yard by a set date, then the day after said date, post it on a Buy Nothing group or call a junk hauler if it’s too far gone.
Send questions to R. Eric Thomas at [email protected] or P.O. Box 22474, Philadelphia, PA 19110. Follow him on Instagram and sign up for his weekly newsletter at rericthomas.com.