I suspect this is highly variable between people. I can imagine kids who would be deeply attached to their stuff, deeply apathetic and want nearly none of it, and a few who would think they wanted a lot of it and yet would realize it wasn’t a big deal to them.

Only tough part is determining which one they’ll be!

If it were me as the college student though, I would find it fair if a summer were declared the Summer Of Claiming Your Crap, and all stuff that I actually wanted had to be in designated storage bins that I’d commit to come retrieve after college, and the rest would be donated.

Donating it without consulting me would have seemed like a betrayal, no matter whether I actually needed it.

This must be a generational issue. My kids took “their” things with them when they became autonomous adults. As parents, we raised our children that they would move out and establish their own identities and futures. We never created any expectation that their childhood home would serve as a storage facility, extended stay facility or even exist. We of course offer help and support when needed.

I know this is in conflict with a lot of modern parenting for many reasons. Our primary goal was to create independent, autonomous, fully functional adults capable of funding their own lives and determining their own future.

They gave away my Charizard ;_;

> If my parents had done that I would have been pissed.

I was pretty pissed when I went off to college and my parents threw away my 80s computer that would now be considered a classic.