I completely understand the author’s intent here. It makes sense. I have one of those cabinets full of china that we felt we needed to have at the time of our wedding. It’s rarely used and if my kids don’t want it someday, that is fine with me.
But my grandmother had a “hope chest” a long low one she kept at the foot of her bed. It was special to her and she kept offering it to me. Finally, after a few no’s, I said yes and we kept it in our first apartment holding all those china pieces we rarely used.
Fast forward to our first house and we finally had a China cabinet to put all those china pieces in but no room for the chest. So into storage it went holding all the boxes for the China.
Even further down the road, my husband and I kept looking for a media console to put under our tv. Could never find one until one day my husband suggested using the hope chest! He refinished it and stained it black. It was perfect. I loved that we were able to repurpose something that was so special to my grandma, who I had a very close relationship with. So you never know. Those offered pieces could have special meaning at a later date. 😊
A few years ago my husband died and I had to clean out our house mostly by myself. I gave away an amazing variety of things to charities and listed for free porch pickup on FB free page. Sold a little, took only my grandmother's walnut art deco dining room set from the 1930s. I use it for storage in my two-room apartment now. It was appraised for $8000 thirty years ago. I made my daughter promise to take it, use it or sell it, just please don't put it out in the rain on the curb! I kept nothing from my parents, they didn't have anything of interest and anything valuable, I sold....in my own house, we bought a dozen nicely framed prints. (spent almost $1000). Picasso, Dali, O'Keefe, many others, and blow ups of photos we took. I put out a 'please come and give these a good home', and off they went. Plus a box of fine china, a gift, place settings for twenty - yes, twenty - we never once used...It's only stuff, the world is drowning in stuff. But my grandma's beautiful little dining room set has always tugged at my heart. I hope after I'm gone it's treasured and appreciated.
That dining set is more than furniture. It holds your grandmother, your history, and the one thing that still feels worth carrying forward. I hope your daughter treasures it too!
Some do, some don’t. Depends on what they individually want to do in their own lives. A cousin wanted all Mother’s family history. Welcome to it, I said. My sister wanted all remaining contents of her big house, except a few cartons of handwritten notes and family photos, to put in her junk store, which lasted about two years. Welcome to…most of it. But I will lovingly curate anybody’s book collection and find things to make with anybody’s yarn stash. I’ll even have a go at selling other “stuff.”
Absolutely. Some people want the family history, some want the books or yarn, and some would rather leave it all behind. It really does depend on the person.
There is a saying one person’s trash is another persons treasure so don’t throw away stuff can be recycled, upcycled and reused as landfills etc are full of stuff that needn’t be there.
Old China tea sets might be appreciated in retirement and nursing homes where it won’t matter if they get broken because the people there will have had some use out of them for a while anyway. Little old fashioned cafes and tea or coffee shops might like them and make use of them too if you aren’t going to use them. Just a thought if family and friends don’t want them.
Proof that the algorithm knows everything about us (!), this landed in my feed just before I head to the attic of our now-tenanted family home where we plan to dispose of much of what we left there four years ago when we emigrated - boxes and boxes of stuff we couldn’t part with but now barely remember what’s in them (apart from books - those are my Achilles Heel!)
And not long after a painful conversation with my hoarder-Mum who wants us to have her old bookcases but refused hands down to let me take home two photographs I’ve always loved (one of me as a baby, the other of my granny, her Mum) that I found buried in amongst old padded envelopes and travel articles and other bits that looked like they were destined for the recycling.
I love the idea another person posted here about telling the story or the meaning of something you want to give a loved one. Or just ask them outright what they’d love to have. The rest can be recycled/up cycled and go off and have a life you might never imagine, and that’s kinda cool in its own way, too
If you are over 70, when you ask your children what they want, just give it to them, right then and there. you have no idea how happy they will be to receive it! don't wait for later...and you will be relieved of a burden, right then and there.
I keep asking my 83 yo neighbor if her kids want all her knickknacks that she has. Her answer is “these are my parents stuff so why not”. Personally I only kept 1 or 2 things and gave away or threw away the rest. We don’t have the same memories or attachments to your stuff.
OH BOY can I relate to this on a few levels. We have a neighbor who has a house full of stuff she thinks her kids should want. They want none of it. Much of it is little trinket-type stuff that she's collected - it has meaning to HER - and then, barely as she fancies herself an antique 'dealer'. Her kids have told her to get rid of that stuff, but she can't. Her relationships with her children are tenuous at best. She supports one, almost fully, who lives close. Another lives in Colorado (we're Ohio) and keeps her distance - coming every year when her mother (our neighbor) has her annual Thanksgiving week stroke (no joke - the last 3 years), and her son is in SC and he's the one most 'mean' about her getting rid of her stuff. Then there's my mother, who collects...multiple sets of 'red' dishes (antique) - we have no fewer than 4 sets of dishes in this house - and I'm not talking plates and cups, I'm talking every serving piece known to man for most of them. Then, there are the endless white pitchers in all sizes from 1/4 cup to ginormous. Me? I'm a minimalist - if I have it, it has a purpose or I truly love it. She feels more comfortable surrounded by her stuff - when we tried to sell last year and boxed up a bunch of stuff, I began to feel like I could breathe - she got more anxious. I sit here and 'dream' of the day when I can pare down her stuff and get rid of the visual clutter. It's mind numbing. The funny thing is that much of it doesn't carry any memories of anything, unlike your story. Her wedding dishes - I have no clue what those were. Other than two trunks of photos and bits and pieces, there's nothing here that she treasures today that holds a family memory.
Reframing interest for old furniture as an environmental choice helps change perspectives. If you pitch furniture as a greener choice or as a form of recycling, it warms people to it.
I went through my collection of linens and china tea things and chose 4 tea cups, a tea cloth with 4 embroidered napkins, 4 little tea spoons, and couple of other tea things and put them into a pretty box and gave them to my 2 grandaughters and 1 niece for Christmas we spent together. They loved them and i loved watching them open them.
The two eldest girls were highschoolers and the youngest was 8 or 9 yo.
Your article has really struck a chord and a memory - it’s made me quite sad too.
My daughter bought a bungalow last summer - it is exactly 100 years old and she knew she would fully renovate it. When electricians came in to do a total rewire they took up sections of floorboards. In the front bedroom they found boxes full of “ possessions”
We dusted them off and opened carefully ….. lots of dishes, brass ornaments and a couple of china tea-sets! Clearly put away for the future…. Perhaps forgotten or reading above unwanted but too hard to let go. We still have them as I feel they need to be considered and maybe used in some way - I believe in sustainability but it’s hard to apply such principles to these items isnt it.
This article then reminds me that here, in my own loft space I have a 2 boxes carefully stored. I have lived in at least 13 houses so both boxes have moved possibly 10 times. In them are beautiful tea sets that I inherited from my own mum but she had inherited these too. One set had belonged to her mum, who died long before I was born when my mum was just 13. The other tea set was from my dad’s mum, she used these for ‘best’ - both sets apparently were first inherited by my two grandmothers from their own mothers ( my great grandparents )
It has saddened me that these tea sets, once “ best tea sets” have lived in boxes for most of their existence, packed away for 100 + years by my reckoning as my grandmothers were born circa 1910. Mum remembered her mums best plates but these vanished when she was 13 and her mum died. Her step mum finally handed the box to her in the year after mums dad died at 99 (so mum was then 65+ ) they’d spent years in the loft of her childhood home her stepmum finally thought my mum should have them. It was very emotional unwrapping them that first time. They are so lovely!
Maybe I should get them out and use them to honour the women who held them before me ?
I’m thinking of maybe hosting a tea party for my friends, perhaps in my daughters garden ( which is also 100 years old with wonderful
old trees surrounding it )
Perhaps this September, to mark the end of summer, it will be good to use these treasured plates, cups and saucers at last !
My mom passed and I ended up with some of her furniture. I already had a few totes put in the attic that were full of things she crocheted for me. I also had jewelry and some china from her mother. Just sentimental things, really. Well, 7 months after she died my house burned down and everything is now gone. Don’t say you don’t want anything your parents and grandparents had!! You can’t get them back once they’re gone.
I’m so sorry. I don’t think anyone is saying we shouldn’t keep the things that truly matter. Just that love isn’t measured by how much we keep. I’m sorry you had to lose those memories twice. ❤️
I live in what was my grandparents and then my parents house and have three generations of stuff of all kinds and no children or grandchildren. I know my greatnephews and neice are not interested. I just don't want it all to end up in a dumpster. I wish there were easier ways to sell things.
That really resonates. It’s hard to think of a lifetime of memories ending up in a dumpster. Even if your family doesn’t want the things, there are people who would appreciate many of them. It just takes time to find them.
This made me tear up. Hits home on so many levels.
I truly thought I would pass it down.
I completely understand the author’s intent here. It makes sense. I have one of those cabinets full of china that we felt we needed to have at the time of our wedding. It’s rarely used and if my kids don’t want it someday, that is fine with me.
But my grandmother had a “hope chest” a long low one she kept at the foot of her bed. It was special to her and she kept offering it to me. Finally, after a few no’s, I said yes and we kept it in our first apartment holding all those china pieces we rarely used.
Fast forward to our first house and we finally had a China cabinet to put all those china pieces in but no room for the chest. So into storage it went holding all the boxes for the China.
Even further down the road, my husband and I kept looking for a media console to put under our tv. Could never find one until one day my husband suggested using the hope chest! He refinished it and stained it black. It was perfect. I loved that we were able to repurpose something that was so special to my grandma, who I had a very close relationship with. So you never know. Those offered pieces could have special meaning at a later date. 😊
I love this. Sometimes it’s not about keeping the item exactly as it was, but finding a new way for it to stay part of your life. ❤️
A few years ago my husband died and I had to clean out our house mostly by myself. I gave away an amazing variety of things to charities and listed for free porch pickup on FB free page. Sold a little, took only my grandmother's walnut art deco dining room set from the 1930s. I use it for storage in my two-room apartment now. It was appraised for $8000 thirty years ago. I made my daughter promise to take it, use it or sell it, just please don't put it out in the rain on the curb! I kept nothing from my parents, they didn't have anything of interest and anything valuable, I sold....in my own house, we bought a dozen nicely framed prints. (spent almost $1000). Picasso, Dali, O'Keefe, many others, and blow ups of photos we took. I put out a 'please come and give these a good home', and off they went. Plus a box of fine china, a gift, place settings for twenty - yes, twenty - we never once used...It's only stuff, the world is drowning in stuff. But my grandma's beautiful little dining room set has always tugged at my heart. I hope after I'm gone it's treasured and appreciated.
That dining set is more than furniture. It holds your grandmother, your history, and the one thing that still feels worth carrying forward. I hope your daughter treasures it too!
Some do, some don’t. Depends on what they individually want to do in their own lives. A cousin wanted all Mother’s family history. Welcome to it, I said. My sister wanted all remaining contents of her big house, except a few cartons of handwritten notes and family photos, to put in her junk store, which lasted about two years. Welcome to…most of it. But I will lovingly curate anybody’s book collection and find things to make with anybody’s yarn stash. I’ll even have a go at selling other “stuff.”
Absolutely. Some people want the family history, some want the books or yarn, and some would rather leave it all behind. It really does depend on the person.
There is a saying one person’s trash is another persons treasure so don’t throw away stuff can be recycled, upcycled and reused as landfills etc are full of stuff that needn’t be there.
Old China tea sets might be appreciated in retirement and nursing homes where it won’t matter if they get broken because the people there will have had some use out of them for a while anyway. Little old fashioned cafes and tea or coffee shops might like them and make use of them too if you aren’t going to use them. Just a thought if family and friends don’t want them.
Proof that the algorithm knows everything about us (!), this landed in my feed just before I head to the attic of our now-tenanted family home where we plan to dispose of much of what we left there four years ago when we emigrated - boxes and boxes of stuff we couldn’t part with but now barely remember what’s in them (apart from books - those are my Achilles Heel!)
And not long after a painful conversation with my hoarder-Mum who wants us to have her old bookcases but refused hands down to let me take home two photographs I’ve always loved (one of me as a baby, the other of my granny, her Mum) that I found buried in amongst old padded envelopes and travel articles and other bits that looked like they were destined for the recycling.
I love the idea another person posted here about telling the story or the meaning of something you want to give a loved one. Or just ask them outright what they’d love to have. The rest can be recycled/up cycled and go off and have a life you might never imagine, and that’s kinda cool in its own way, too
If you are over 70, when you ask your children what they want, just give it to them, right then and there. you have no idea how happy they will be to receive it! don't wait for later...and you will be relieved of a burden, right then and there.
I keep asking my 83 yo neighbor if her kids want all her knickknacks that she has. Her answer is “these are my parents stuff so why not”. Personally I only kept 1 or 2 things and gave away or threw away the rest. We don’t have the same memories or attachments to your stuff.
OH BOY can I relate to this on a few levels. We have a neighbor who has a house full of stuff she thinks her kids should want. They want none of it. Much of it is little trinket-type stuff that she's collected - it has meaning to HER - and then, barely as she fancies herself an antique 'dealer'. Her kids have told her to get rid of that stuff, but she can't. Her relationships with her children are tenuous at best. She supports one, almost fully, who lives close. Another lives in Colorado (we're Ohio) and keeps her distance - coming every year when her mother (our neighbor) has her annual Thanksgiving week stroke (no joke - the last 3 years), and her son is in SC and he's the one most 'mean' about her getting rid of her stuff. Then there's my mother, who collects...multiple sets of 'red' dishes (antique) - we have no fewer than 4 sets of dishes in this house - and I'm not talking plates and cups, I'm talking every serving piece known to man for most of them. Then, there are the endless white pitchers in all sizes from 1/4 cup to ginormous. Me? I'm a minimalist - if I have it, it has a purpose or I truly love it. She feels more comfortable surrounded by her stuff - when we tried to sell last year and boxed up a bunch of stuff, I began to feel like I could breathe - she got more anxious. I sit here and 'dream' of the day when I can pare down her stuff and get rid of the visual clutter. It's mind numbing. The funny thing is that much of it doesn't carry any memories of anything, unlike your story. Her wedding dishes - I have no clue what those were. Other than two trunks of photos and bits and pieces, there's nothing here that she treasures today that holds a family memory.
Reframing interest for old furniture as an environmental choice helps change perspectives. If you pitch furniture as a greener choice or as a form of recycling, it warms people to it.
I went through my collection of linens and china tea things and chose 4 tea cups, a tea cloth with 4 embroidered napkins, 4 little tea spoons, and couple of other tea things and put them into a pretty box and gave them to my 2 grandaughters and 1 niece for Christmas we spent together. They loved them and i loved watching them open them.
The two eldest girls were highschoolers and the youngest was 8 or 9 yo.
Great article! So kindly written.
But what is “the one question test?”
Your article has really struck a chord and a memory - it’s made me quite sad too.
My daughter bought a bungalow last summer - it is exactly 100 years old and she knew she would fully renovate it. When electricians came in to do a total rewire they took up sections of floorboards. In the front bedroom they found boxes full of “ possessions”
We dusted them off and opened carefully ….. lots of dishes, brass ornaments and a couple of china tea-sets! Clearly put away for the future…. Perhaps forgotten or reading above unwanted but too hard to let go. We still have them as I feel they need to be considered and maybe used in some way - I believe in sustainability but it’s hard to apply such principles to these items isnt it.
This article then reminds me that here, in my own loft space I have a 2 boxes carefully stored. I have lived in at least 13 houses so both boxes have moved possibly 10 times. In them are beautiful tea sets that I inherited from my own mum but she had inherited these too. One set had belonged to her mum, who died long before I was born when my mum was just 13. The other tea set was from my dad’s mum, she used these for ‘best’ - both sets apparently were first inherited by my two grandmothers from their own mothers ( my great grandparents )
It has saddened me that these tea sets, once “ best tea sets” have lived in boxes for most of their existence, packed away for 100 + years by my reckoning as my grandmothers were born circa 1910. Mum remembered her mums best plates but these vanished when she was 13 and her mum died. Her step mum finally handed the box to her in the year after mums dad died at 99 (so mum was then 65+ ) they’d spent years in the loft of her childhood home her stepmum finally thought my mum should have them. It was very emotional unwrapping them that first time. They are so lovely!
Maybe I should get them out and use them to honour the women who held them before me ?
I’m thinking of maybe hosting a tea party for my friends, perhaps in my daughters garden ( which is also 100 years old with wonderful
old trees surrounding it )
Perhaps this September, to mark the end of summer, it will be good to use these treasured plates, cups and saucers at last !
Sounds like a great plan!
My mom passed and I ended up with some of her furniture. I already had a few totes put in the attic that were full of things she crocheted for me. I also had jewelry and some china from her mother. Just sentimental things, really. Well, 7 months after she died my house burned down and everything is now gone. Don’t say you don’t want anything your parents and grandparents had!! You can’t get them back once they’re gone.
I’m so sorry. I don’t think anyone is saying we shouldn’t keep the things that truly matter. Just that love isn’t measured by how much we keep. I’m sorry you had to lose those memories twice. ❤️
I live in what was my grandparents and then my parents house and have three generations of stuff of all kinds and no children or grandchildren. I know my greatnephews and neice are not interested. I just don't want it all to end up in a dumpster. I wish there were easier ways to sell things.
That really resonates. It’s hard to think of a lifetime of memories ending up in a dumpster. Even if your family doesn’t want the things, there are people who would appreciate many of them. It just takes time to find them.