What happens to your sex toys when you die?

What happens to your sex toys when you die? Have you ever thought about this? I guess if your spouse or significant other knows about them, it’s not a big deal, but what if your spouse is gone and your kids are handling your estate? I guess it depends on your kids.

We own an estate sale company in the PNW, we see a lot of things, weird things, cool things, but sexy things?

We find a lot of sexy-time toys when we are going through people’s houses. Some of them are pretty ho-hum, run of the mill, Hitachi wand kind of things, others are more interesting.

My all time favorite was not so much an interesting toy but the way it was, how shall I say, presented…

Let me set the scene. A very nice house in an old Seattle neighborhood, full of nice art and East Coast antiques. The lady who lived there had been very well dressed, in an understated sort of way, I know, I went through her closet. I can picture her drinking Earl Grey tea and nibbling on a bit of dry toast.

I started the day by pulling all of the “good stuff” out of her closet before I started cleaning out her furniture. In the corner of the room was a big, antique tall boy dresser. I start at the top and the drawers are empty. Sometimes families don’t want us to see their parents “unmentionables” or they think Mom’s old clothes aren’t worth anything and either take them to the Goodwill or throw them out. Next drawer down, empty. At this point I’m figuring the whole dresser is empty, but I have to do my due diligence.

I make it all the way to the bottom drawer before I find it. There, carefully positioned right in the center of the drawer was a big, pink, rabbit vibrator. There’s no way this was an accident. Someone cleaned out Grandma’s dresser and left that there. I’m not sure if it was done as a joke on whoever looked in the bottom drawer or if someone said ‘I’m not touching that’ and just left it behind. I never asked the family. It’s been years and I still laugh about it.

One of my favorite estate sale exclamations is “Not as weird as a box full of dicks” and it has a pretty good origin story too. We were doing a sale for a client of her father’s estate that had been in storage for ages. Pretty normal stuff for all intents and purposes, some art, some furniture, some cool Washington state memorabilia, nothing to make you suspect.

In the bottom of one of the last boxes I went through was another, smaller box, taped closed.

This must be the good stuff right? Double boxed, carefully sealed.

I cut the tape and open the box.

It’s a box of dicks. Dildos and vibrators to be more precise. A whole box! Okay, so things I learned about this guy before finding the box- He was an art collector, he had actually been a county sheriff for a while at some point. He liked to go on cruises and from all the photos and stuff I’d say he had been a bit of a ladies man. But…

Were these his toys? Was he going on dates and bringing a toy with him? So many questions.

In one house, a really weird house that was built in the late sixties and stayed there, we found some fun stuff and by fun, I mean weird. How about some homemade testicle weights (ball stretchers?) In a box of old, dried up condoms and some other sexy time things (see photo at the top) there were several large (no, really large) lead fishing weights that had rubber rings attached to them, and before you ask, they were too big for anybody’s nipples.

Oh, and then there was the actual swinger’s club we did a sale at…

Anyway, if you have a secret stash of sex toys hidden away, you might want to let your most most trusted confidant know so they can whisk them away before the estate sale company gets there. Or not, I don’t mind.

(And no, we don’t sell used sex toys.)