A lifetime of stuff, priced to sell

Deborah Richardson grew up with her strict but beloved Portuguese grandmother. They lived together on the first floor of a slim threestory tenement building in Fall River, Mass. Her grandmother was an immigrant who worked in a cotton mill in Fall River from the time she was a little girl until she retired. Now that cotton mill is a condominium.

Would her grandmother allow her to date? “Oh, please,” guffaws Ms. Richardson, who has been remarried for 23 years, but rebelled first by getting married at age 18. Her grandmother refused to see other men after her husband died long before her. Not even death did could do them part.

“His name was on the tombstone and her name was under it and that’s where she was going,” Ms. Richardson said. Ms. Richardson moved across the

Ms. Richardson moved across the river from the tenement, to Providence, and studied art for a while when she was young. Later she moved to Lehigh Acres with her husband and became an estate salesperson, which is what she does now. Her grandmother continued to live on the first floor of the tenement building until she died at age 90, 13 years ago. Ms. Richardson doesn’t have much from that old home, but is fond of a few items she was able to keep: a black patent

leather purse, a pair of gloves, rosary beads.

It’s not like her business, Lee County Estate Sales, in which she categorizes and prices hundreds of items. Usually, all the items left in someone’s estate sell off over the course of a weekend. The most important part is the advertising, and the signs directing traffic to the sale. She charges a 30 percent fee, researching items to make sure they sell for a fair price. “You just try to sell every last thing that’s in that house,” she said.

The things they left behind, taken as a whole, seem random: paintings, pots and pans, a Seminole Indian dress, Bibles, rifles, a stuffed and preserved wolf.

“One lady had elephants in every capacity you could thing of — clothing, ashtrays,” Ms. Richardson said. “One guy, I think his wife had died maybe 15 years before he did. He had tools. There were tools in the bathroom, underneath the sink, in the closets, the garage, in the living room. I’d never seen so many tools in all my life. He’d have like two generators, seven pressure washers.”

Sometimes it’s emotional work. One man died in a motorcycle crash in his 50s, and his mother came to the house each day, showing Ms. Richardson his things, mourning the loss of her son.

“One day he’s here and the next day he’s gone,” she said.

Some people judge the deceased based on his or her things. Ms. Richardson has heard the low, rude grumbling at some sales. Her opinion is live and let live.

“Who’s to say what they should and shouldn’t have?” she asks.

Sometimes there is greed at estate sales. “It was the saddest thing I’ve ever seen, sisters battling it out over pots and dish pans,” she remembers. Other times, there is awe and wonder: postcards from Mina Edison, a beautiful painting.

Other times there are personal items that should not be sold. Underpants, love letters and personal diaries have fallen into that category.

“Sometimes it almost makes you feel like you’re intruding,” she said about pricing items for a sale.

The estate sales have given her some perspective.

“Now that I’m getting older, I’d just like to lighten the load,” she said of her own belongings. “I really think it wears you down. I mean, I know it does.” She adds conspiratorially, “We’ve been thinking about moving to Mexico…. Washington State, Tennessee. You want to have a future, something to fall back on when you’re older, but just to sit and work for something that’s going to end up with a price sticker on it, it seems hardly worth the cost.”

Ms. Richardson sometimes wonders what kind of life her grandmother would have had if she had moved away from the tenement and her things there — the life and ways she was so protective of. “She said, ‘I loved math. I loved to take tests,’” Ms. Richardson said. “She seemed to me the kind of person who would have enjoyed being a teacher.” 