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.
Several knives, blades, and daggers in my dad’s knife collection belonged to his grandfather, and were passed down to his father. He says he plans on dividing the collection among his kids when the time comes.
Knives mean a lot in our family. We each got our first pocket knife on our 8th birthday, the same way our dad got his first one. Knife safety (especially passing a knife) is part ritual, part common sense. We give them as gifts for birthdays, Christmas, and Easter. It’s a way of making sure the people we love the most will always have the oldest and most useful tool mankind ever invented in their pocket.
I know it’s considered bad luck in some cultures, but to us, it’s a heartfelt act of love. I’ll be honored to have my father’s knife one day.
We have an accordion played by my great grandfather.
Does anyone still knows how to play it?
Unfortunately no! I will learn if it passes into my hands - I already play other instruments.
All the luck on that!
Not really. My wife has some bulky furniture that we plan on tossing out once her mother dies. It’s worthless and of no practical use, which is probably why she passed it by on already.
My grandparents had some cool stuff, but their children got in an argument over some of it, so I don’t know who got what and I don’t want anything to do with that. Hopefully they’re happy with ruining their relationships over items that belong in a museum.
I have 2 rifles with bayonets and a wakizashi that my grandfather acquired from WWII, and a level that my carpenter great-grandfather used.
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.
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!
You had me really concerned until that last sentence. That is so freaking sad.
No I don’t.
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.
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.
We call them trophies and I invoke my fifth amendment rights.
This isn’t a public trial. Just keep your peace.
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.
That was going really well unril it wasn’t.
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.
I have a brosh and my cousin has the earrings my great great great whatever wore when she was painted by Monet. Whenever he went to the Netherlands he always stayed at my family. She wears mourning clothes and jewelry.
Here’s the painting, which hangs at the Kruller Muller museum in Apeldoorn The Netherlands.
Now that is a story!
I have an even better story. The biggest Dutch sea pirate was an ancestor of me. Back then it was an honorable profession. The entire area of the Zaanstreek was his. Whenever you go to the open air museum Zaanse Schans, all the windmills and store fronts were owned by him. When Willem van Orange (William of Orange) wanted to unite the 7 provinces, creating the first nation of The Netherlands, my ancestor was the main funder of the project, his signature is on the decleration of the seven provinces.
Monet stayed at that family. Nothing of their wealth has reached me sadly, only the story and the brosh. Even the painting was illegally donated by someone’s partner to the museum due to the high insurance costs. But at least everyone can see it now and it is well maintained. And I have a good story to tell. I wouldn’t have minded it if I had inherited a house or something though.
The sea pirate was Engel van de Stad by the way. Not much is known about him online, as he never worked for the state so he never was named a naval hero or something like Michiel de Ruyter for example. Yet the fortune he gained by raiding British, French and Spanish fleets helped create the country I call home. We have only found documentation in a museum and in archives. I bet it would make amazing YouTube videos as soon as his story comes out.
Some tale!
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!
The most heirloom thing I own is a special publication from our local newspaper from 1933(? I’m not sure if the exact year, but it’s definitely the thirties) that used to belong to my great grandmother.
It’s a newspaper sized book that’s maybe 50 pages and it celebrates the 150th anniversary of my hometown.
I don’t think it’s worth any significant money, but I think it’s fascinating to flip through the stories and read the old ads.
That is an heirloom!
