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.

Yup, I've got quite a few things by now, and I'm in line for some more.

I don't know about a sense of belonging, but a historical thing you're tangentially connected to is cooler than just a random historical thing.

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.

I try. I like hand sized mementos. Less likely to lose and not bulky enough to be a burden.

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.

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.

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 I don't.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Been archiving my dead parents' documents over the past year cause I've been unemployed. Letters, tax returns, celebratory cards, bills, etc. I think they'll come in handy in case some fascist fuckwit tries to decide I'm not a citizen or wasn't born in this country.

Once I'm done with the documents, I'm moving onto archiving VHS tapes, then photos.

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.

Sadly I was the black sheep of the family and having nothing from my side. I really wanted this chair from my grandma and my grandpa's grandfather clock. Or really anything. My grandma made her own cards and I would have been happy with her stamp collection which no one else in the family wanted. My mom sold them without even offering me a chance to buy them.

On my wife's side though we've become what I call "The Keepers of the Ancient Ways".

We have been handed the old family recipes. We have been handed trunks of family photos that I'm slowly digitizing. We actually ended up in my wife's grandpa's house that my wife basically grew up in. I'm trying to compile as many stories from relatives as I can. We are slowly building a family tree (if you want any advice just holler. There's a lot of pitfalls newbies miss).

We try to collect only the truly meaningful things so we can document them but my wife's family has strong hoarder tendencies so we walk a line.

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.

I have a couple of things already from relatives who have already left us and expect I might get a few more when others pass on (not for a while yet, I hope). None of them are particularly valuable, but they mean something to me because of who they're from.

I have no descendants, so I expect everything will be discarded when I'm gone.

I kept a lot of stuff from my parents house after they passed. Most of it is still in boxes and I have yet to find the time to really go through it and take inventory.

Among those items there looks to be a lot of things that were kept in their own parents’ homes. China pieces, old collectibles…there is what looks to be a certified Catholic holy relic, which I haven’t the faintest idea what to do with. There is a pretty sizable collection of steins that I’ve kept out of pure sentiment, though I haven’t gone out of my way to set up a place to display them.

Thing is, most of this stuff I took from an outdoor storage shed where they just stuffed anything they didn’t have room for in the house. Had been sitting untouched for decades and was covered in dirt and mouse shit when I finally got to it. Spent a lot of time cleaning and trying to salvage what I could. So to that end I hesitate to call any of this stuff “heirlooms” when it seems to mostly be things they didn’t really value but couldn’t bring themselves to throw or give away.

I have a bedroom set my grandfather made. They’re beautiful, solid, and honestly just my taste. The drawers are made from crates they used to ship their belongings back to the US after living abroad for his work for a few years, so there’s deeper personal history there.

I kept a fair bit of art and a number of trinkets when my other grandparents passed, plus their dining room set. I’ve since gotten a nicer dining room set and the old one is in storage… I couldn’t quite stand to get rid of it, and it would make a good gaming table someday. Plus a rocking chair that was gifted to my grandpa by an organization at the university he taught at.

I had the opportunity to take dishes and things, but skipped most of it because I didn’t feel a connection to them, except for two glasses in a set of bird glasses. I only liked the two and they match; I didn’t need the full set to have the reminder of meals with my grandparents.

These things give me a sense of connection to my family and my past.

Only if it serves a purpose (old tools which are used) or it is small and has associated memories worth the space it takes up. Nothing that continues to exist just because someone else in the family had it.

The idea of an obligation to retain heirlooms because they are heirlooms seems like a recipe for being stuck in the past, because homes aren't museums.

Most of my family were refugees during WW2 and lost pretty much all their belongings, including some truly priceless pieces and properties that are still talked about. I do have a pretty substantial trove of documents and photos dating back to the 1850s though, this was all they were allowed to carry.