My family’s history and story is of great concern to, so much so that I intend to reconstruct the family tree as far as I can get in order to know who came before me.
In this same sense, I put a lot a value into objects that have reached through the generations. I have china, some furniture, personal items, photos and photo albums, etc.
Everything tells a piece of a story I wasn’t able to fully live through and instead just brushed me growing up.
It gives me a sense of belonging.
we have a box filled with baby teeth going back about 8 generations.
we have another box filled with locks of baby hair.
and I haven’t even mentioned the box of babies yet.
Yes, just a few things:
My great-great-grandfather’s portrait, bayonet and a copy of his discharge papers from his Civil War service.
The flag from my grandfather’s coffin.
There are things I’d like to have/keep in the family when my parents pass.
I have a painting of the Australian desert that belonged to my mother. It’s banished to the second bedroom because it’s got a thick coating of nicotine, but I plan to have it cleaned some day.
Nicotine can be hard to clean. I wish you all the luck with that.
I don’t like things much, it feels oppressive to try to hang on to them. I have a very few that I value. A gun cabinet my dad converted to a shelved cabinet. The harmonica my grandpa played. That may be it, actually. My mom gave me many photographs, I suck at organizing and preserving them, not sure why she gave them to me. I have also 2 other furniture pieces from my grandma’s house but it’s the gun cabinet I won’t part with.
I have lived in the same place a long time and not a big believer in heritage - go 10 generations back and you have 1,024 people who are your great-to the power of 10-parents. Anyone who says they are descended from someone is picking and choosing to create a story. So I feel as belonged as I care to, by belonging to the place I live I guess.
No. We used to have many. My grandparents kept them. After they died, my parents, aunts, and uncle threw everything that wasn’t worth money into a dumpster. They kept the jewelry, coins, watches, and other valuables; everything worth less than $50 got trashed. Photo albums, collars from old pets, pictures they drew as children, sentimental trinkets, my grandpa’s pocket knives, my great grandpa’s letters home during the war for Czech independence, all of it, gone. A lot of it had been stuff I did in school or pictures of me.
“What do you want that for? It ain’t worth nothing,” they would tell me when I asked to keep anything.
People suck.
You had me really concerned until that last sentence. That is so freaking sad.
As my Silent Generation relatives have been dying off, each of them has had boxes of family history - photos, sometimes dating back to early 1900s, diaries/journals, kids’ school art, yearbooks… None of it organized, few of the photos with any indication of who’s in them, where or when they were taken, even who did the art. Shoebox after shoebox of Christmas pictures. Sometimes, one of the survivors will recognize photos, but no one has ever made the effort to record the oral histories, so they will soon be just photos of strangers in mystery locations.
Organize that stuff. Curate it. Make it possible for kids to care.
That was painful to read.
A little while ago a relative told us about how they moved for their parents work. All the toys were thrown out, all the photos; like you everything that wasn’t worth something was disposed of. They even drowned the family cat.
It’s a bit amazing they’re not hardcore hoarders, they just low key keep things.
They drowned the cat? That’s disturbing.
That is for sure!
No I don’t.
my dad and mom passed.
my sister kept trying to get me to take their junk as heirlooms… i just caved and threw it out later.
It was just junk. Like crappy old broken watches from my dad, and some weird ugly jewerly from my mom. IT was worthless stuff, but for whatever reasons my sister had a lot of sentimental value in it and insisted I had to take it.
I come from a poor family and we never had anything of value to pass down or any ‘history’ in our family. it’s weird to think how I have stuff that is like… way more valuable than anything my parents ever had or my grandparents.
I have a diary of my grandma that she wrote during her evacuation from cologne in 1943, and I have an old mandolin my grandfather bought from a homeless man on a street. That meant my grandmother wouldn’t be able to buy food for their 13 children so she was pissed af, but that makes great story for this instrument.
That is quite a story.
My grandparents were not wealthy people. They were products of the Great Depression. They kept nearly everything they ever and bought and every major purchase was carefully calculated.
I only ever saw my grandad wear one watch. A Timex from probably the late 1980’s. I would guess it cost < $20 new at Walmart back then.
It still works. I usually only wear it for special occasions. I’ve spent way more than it’s value having jewelers maintain it over the last 25 years.
I still miss the old man. You can’t put a price tag on those memories.
I can respect that.
I have a few, and created one of my own. I have a steamer trunk that’s been in the family for 5 or more generations, the family Bible from who knows how far back, and proposed to my wife with the ring my papa used to propose to my mom. I also had a sword forged for my wedding, engraved with our family name. While I don’t intend to have children I plan on passing these things down to my nephews when the time comes
Than sounds like a very well thought plan.
For some, yes, for others it’s just stuff that takes up space. The reality of today is there’s often not going to be the financial capacity to hold onto much. Boomers had excess space because they could afford big houses with large garages and outbuildings on large tracts of land.
Even a quarter acre plot is large by today’s shithole subdivision standards. Garages are reduced down to barely fit a vehicle, and driveways likely won’t hold the length of a full sized truck. Basements have been taken away. Shared walls instead of yards on single family townhomes instead of homes.
Even on antiques roadshow, unless it’s Tiffany, knick knacks and general clutter without use items are continuously down in price.
Few have the luxury of space any more.
Take a trip through the online auction markets. Not warehouse returns/junk, just the estate dissolutions with on site pickups after purchase. Or companies like CTBids that operate nationally and do estate downsizing for elderly selling their houses for assisted living situations or small condos, in addition to full estate auctions.
You’re scrolling pages and pages of “crap” inheriting families were going to toss out or things they couldn’t afford to store and keep.
A bit voyeuristic, but you’ll quickly see what people value now. China? No. You can’t use it because you can’t microwave it. Lots of knick knack crap selling for under $5, life collections and such. The useful stuff bids up pretty high. Tools. Even expired MREs. Not collections.
The real prize is the house, and the auction house clears the valuables turned clutter from it faster than families can.
Yes. The thing is, I is po’. My grandma was rich. I have been saddled with “the Narnia cupboard” which only fits when you have high ceilings (one of those with vases), and a matching desk. So whenever I move, I have to figure out if they fit and also hope the removals guys know how to put Narnia together without dropping the damn doors (again).
I’m getting shot of them as soon as my mother passes away. I have some lovely paintings my grandma did and that’s enough where heirlooms are concerned.
We call them trophies and I invoke my fifth amendment rights.
This isn’t a public trial. Just keep your peace.
So, yes*.
I have a few objects of importance that have been passed down but I don’t like to horde stuff. For me it can’t just be something they owned but something they valued or actually used.
And admittedly something that isn’t outrageously large and/or broken.
Being broken often means it was used and valued. I have an old wrist watch that is, apparently, irrepairable. It isn’t going anywhere. An old TV with which I grew up, went.
I’ve got an old wooden sofa that came from my father’s grandmothers home. I don’t know much more about it, but it’s probably a hundred years old.
Nice!