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“I spent a life time making professional and political decisions that robbed the younger generations of the same prosperity I enjoyed and just can’t wrap my head around the fact that they can’t physically fit huge heirloom furniture into their tiny living accommodations”
My wife’s parents have a ton of antique furniture. They’ve given us some stuff, it is out in the garage now. They see our furniture, it is more modern. My mother in law has been pouty, “oh, I guess we need to sell all this before we die! You aren’t going to want any of this.” Thank you, yes. That is exactly what I want. I know that was supposed to be a guilt trip, but that is exactly what we want. Lol
antique furniture
you mean antique or just old. Not the same thing.
Antique. I’d say mission style furniture. My father in law used to do restorations. But it really isn’t my scene at all. My ideal house would be all mid-century. But I also like more modern contemporary furniture.
My grandma was the last one to go of all her sisters.
Her apartment had EIGHT full coffee sets, cups, plates, saucers, sugar dishes etc. just because she inherited them from her siblings and thought we’d want them
Nobody wants any of them, they’re old and pretty and also worth exactly zero euros.
Not quite the same situation but when my grandparents moved in with my parents, they set aside everything in their kitchen into storage and it sat there for 30 years until they died. I save a few things then set most of it out on table with a free sign and 99.99 percent of it got scooped up quick. A fed ex driver told us they were new to the area and almost everything in their kitchen came from our table.
I don’t think small family heirlooms are the issue OP is trying to address. It’s about naitivity of the older generation(s) passing down items that had fit their lifestyle, but their generation made it difficult for the current generation to have the same standards of living.
It’s not about standards. 3 grandkids will never need 7 China sets 😀
All needed exactly 0, I’m fine with the cups I have. I don’t “entertain”
Nobody wants any of them, they’re old and pretty and also worth exactly zero euros.
You’d be VERY surprised.
I am currently living in my great-grandparents’ house. Every room is tiny and filled with stuff three generations of my family kept. I have four tiny rooms and my whole life is stuffed into 3/4 of one cause my parents refuse to part with anything.
I guess what I’m really asking is… could you use my grandma’s antique dining table in your studio apartment?
My grandmother’s house. I have two sewing machines, a 6-place dining set, fine china to serve 8, two sewing machines, several rickety old pillar tables and candle stands, a cabinet full of random glassware, a drawer full of ratty, yellowed old doilies my father “remembers from when I was a kid.” At least three unassworthy antique rocking chairs that are too delicate to serve a purpose…So much shit my father wants, but won’t move into his own heavily cluttered house.
Boomers hoard.
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How many sets of china would you like?
My wife’s grandma offloaded her fancy china on us. When we brought it to Goodwill, they went “Parents or Grandparents?” And they told me this is like their tenth donation this week.
But then the Queen of Netherlands visits and you only have IKEA plates.
Classic mom logic: ‘It’s an heirloom, it’ll fit.’ 😅 Honestly though, the table deserves a dining room… and your studio deserves to keep having floor space.
A few years ago my wife and I decided to finish the basement. The first step was to clean it out, which involved going through all the junk that I had inherited from various family members. My mom always asserted that all of it was very valuable and CONSTANTLY checked that I still had it all and was taking good care of it.
I went through each item one by one and looked them up. Dishes, nick knacks, all of it. It took me hours. The highest value item was maybe $10. Several large and heavy boxes that I had been obligated to haul around to all of the places I lived for the last 30 years, as my mother constantly asked me about them. It was all worth maybe $100, if I made the effort to attempt to sell it. Which would have taken a lot of time as we’re talking dozens of fragile things. It just was not worth it.
I shoved it all into the trunk of my car and took it to the dump. My Mom died in 2011, so she wasn’t around to check up on all that crap.
God damn I was so pissed. 30 fucking years of hauling that worthless junk around probably cost far more than it was worth. My mother was so insistent that I even had it sitting around taking up space in my basement 12 years after her death. Just another one of her little power plays.
Never met her but there’s a chance she might genuinely not have known.
My grandparents and great-grandparents thought a lot of family stuff was worth something but they never actually got it professionally valued. One thing that really stuck out was an ornate silver tea set that looked really nice, was in great condition, was a complete set, hallmarked, turned out to be worth fuck all because nobody actually wants silver tea sets in the 21st century, but they were a big thing a hundred years ago so there’s millions of them out there flooding the market.
There was also a minor hoo-hah over inheritance of the family piano, which then turned out to be a mass-produced budget model that was no longer physically able to be tuned to concert pitch without risk of damage. Turns out budget pianos don’t become antique, they just become old and you have to pay someone to take it away.
You’re probably correct… For most people’s mothers. No, I know mine and I’m positive it was a power play on her part. The reason why I say that is because when she died, my brothers, Dad and I went through her things and guess what we found?
If you guessed items that actually had value, either sentimentally or financially you’d get a prize.
So she purposely separated anything of value from the junk. Then gave the junk to me and my brothers. My brothers also went through their items and sure enough it was all junk. Of course the apples don’t fall too far from the tree. So when our Dad died two years ago my two brothers kept everything. We are all now permanently estranged as far as I’m concerned.
So yeah, I had a fun family growing up. My wife and kids are now fully protected and will never see those people again.
But just to be clear, my family is not rich. I’m not talking about enough money to make dealing with narcissistic power plays worth it.
Good on you.
Just as advice for next time; bring it to a secondhand/thrift shop.
Honestly, I just wanted that junk out of my house and my life. These were several very large and heavy boxes that I had been obliged to haul around for nearly 30 years, all because my mother was playing one of her power games over me. My mother was so far up Cluster B that they probably should add a letter.
I did not want to shackle anyone else with it, because who would have bought it? Other assholes to keep around till they foist it off on their kids or some other unsuspecting schmuck. It was all mass produced garbage. The “China” dishes that were supposed to be “fine” were listed on Ebay and a couple of other sites for $1 each. My mother insisted they were extremely expensive and sought after. I never used them because I was afraid of breaking them. The crash they made when I flung the box into the dumpster was cathartic and healing.
So while it might have been a bit of a waste, it wasn’t as much of a waste as you might think and nobody needs it.
My mother was so far up Cluster B that they probably should add a letter.
BS
I’ve read that a lot of that “valuable” china really isn’t - some of it may have been at one point, but the younger generations just aren’t interested, so the market has just dropped out.
Oh yeah none of it matters, gramma’s china is mass manufactured catalog crap.
why did they collect all that? was it for fancy dinners that almost never happened?
We actually got a full set of wedding china, and we got married in 2018. We’re elder Millennials. While I tell people that they should probably skip the hina, I actually enjoy it. Growing up my parents had a set of china that only came out for company and holidays, and it had a certain charm to it. And I’ve found our set serves a similar role. I actually keep it in the very same cabinet my mom had when I was a kid (she’s long since used a fancier cabinet that matches their dining set.)
But even in 2025, it can be nice to have a set of China. There’s just something special about having people over, either for social occasions or holidays, and being able to offer them a really nice place setting that isn’t part of your normal repertoire. I do got out of my way to use it though. You could just be stopping by my house for a chat, and if I offer you coffee, I’ll probably give it to you in fine china.
I heard that a lot of that stuff had lead in it, making it useless for eating with
That’s simply not true. Or you’re confusing antique century-old porcelain with finishes not used today with contemporary pieces.
My understanding is there are several related things at play:
- The jello effect. So, once upon a time, serving gelatin was reserved for the wealthy because making gelatin from scratch means rendering animal bones. You’ve got to be rich enough to pay servants/own slaves enough to do that for you. Then after WWII, there was suddenly a mass-produced easy to use product on the shelf called Jell-O. So in the 50’s and 60’s you saw an explosion in popularity of jello molds because serving gelatin was, to quote a Redditor I once read, “an impressive feat of housewifery.” Fancy dishes were similar; prior to WWII, fine decorated porcelain dishes were expensive, after WWII there were factories churning them out, and now Gladys from Topeka could have a floral print gilded gravy boat.
- Fancy dishes, and housewares in general, were marketed HARD to young women. Macy’s popularized the wedding registry, supermarkets started offering catalogs…it was common for young women to receive a portion of a china set for most of her adolescent gift-receiving occasions; Christmases, birthdays, high school graduation…this was the era of the hope chest, an entire industry sprang up for manufacturing pieces of furniture designed for young women to squirrel away a physical dowry in. You just weren’t a proper middle class lady unless you could come up with a fancy set of dishes to serve a Christmas dinner worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting on.
So these damn dishes that can’t be machine washed were manufactured in the quadrillions; Gramma got really protective over them, she was taught to value them from a very young age, and they’re delicate, easily broken, her particular set hasn’t been manufactured since the Truman administration so in a way they’re irreplaceable, and they must be hand-washed. So only a few Thanksgiving or Christmas dinners, “special occasions” were served on them, and then by the 80’s gramma got sick of washing them, boomer dad “remembers that from when he was a kid” and thus they’re more sacred than God, God’s brother Jod and God’s nephew Zhod. To a boomer, there is no occasion special enough to break out gramma’s china, it’d be like eating dinner off of the original copy of the Declaration of Independence. Unthinkable.
Millennials, who eat a lot of meals out of paper and plastic takeout containers, have no attachment to those damn dishes and haul them to thrift stores by the truckload.
This comment is a piece of art
That makes sense. I suppose it’s similar to me buying an anime figurine but at least I’m not under any pretense it’s going to be worth something someday and it’s up in the air whether anyone want to inherit it. It kind of sucks how much marketing has manufactured stuff out of thin air that we’re all just supposed to go with despite it being totally artificial.
Oh there’s gonna be Gen Alpha or Gen Beta kids filling dumpsters with Stanley cups, anime figurines, gundam models and retro consoles in the 2060s. “Why did my grandmother think this was cool?”
Stanley cups are just cups that people are way too excited about for some reason. Anime figurines, depends on if.they like the anime too. If not, they’re not worth anything. Retro consoles are cool but there are emulators
I feel Stanley cups will still have a small amount of value, they’re a decent quality insulated cup after all.
Glad you freed yourself from all the stuff. I had a similar experience clearing out my grandma’s hoarded house.
I am curious though, why take it to the dump instead of donating it to a thrift store?
Spite.
Honestly, it was all junk.
At least you got something out of it. Feeling good throwing it away
Yeah, I feel a lot of the boomer generation has a hoarding problem despite so many not being in a situation to need to. I would have taken it to a thrift store though regardless. Even if they don’t sell it someone of the staff may make use of it. That said, good on getting rid of a burden on your life mentally.
I wonder what caused it? was it stuff all of a sudden becoming cheaper than places to put it? was it wisdom passed down from parents who experienced the great depression. an ideological commitment to assigning moral worth to wealth and by extension material possessions?
Some of it was their parents having lived thrush the great depression and lost out on having much of anything and wished their grandparents would have kept stuff just in case. So our boomer parents were taught how important hoarding was.
I think it may be more that they were the first generation to really be targeted by a disposability culture. The world they were born in was such that tv repair was a job and it was expected that if your small appliances broke you’d fix them rather than assuming it’s just not financially worth it. And their great grandparents had lived in a world where middle class people may have a few nice things that were hand crafted and meant to be passed down in a sort of poor person’s version of wealth.
So as mass production and upward mobility skyrocketed in the 20th century, it makes perfect sense that the generation born in the middle of it would not really get that the fact that their parents and grandparents had boxes of “valuable stuff worth a fortune” despite never actually having a fortune or anything close to it means they didn’t, they just had mass produced imitations of what once had been reserved for the wealthy.
Today all items are disposable because consumer goods are either too cheaply made to last a long time (furniture) or too complex or hostilly made to be able to efficiently repair compared to the labor and materials to make a new one (electronics)
I feel like it wouldn’t even be hard to make small appliances or even major appliances that were designed with repairability first, we just need somebody to hurry up and design such a thing and get the parts manufactured
Annnnnd the corporation was bought for a ton of money to eliminate the competition
Their parents grew up during the Great Depression, so they learned a lot of that stuff from them. Probably
You might like this. There’s a relevant book mentioned too.
Watch, there was actually a hidden fortune stuffed somewhere in there
There’s always money in the banana stand
LOL. That would be funny.
But no, my wife and I went through every piece, opened all the lids. No fortune.
Luckily this is less of an issue in the future with “Ikea” or whatever
it’s furniture adapted to the different needs we have. little space, frequent moving. cheap furniture that only has to last until the next change in space usage renders it obsolete
it’s furniture adapted to the different needs we have. little space, frequent moving. cheap furniture that only has to last until the next change in space usage renders it obsolete
“Better hang on to it just in case” ~boomers
My parents rented a storage unit when my grandma passed because no one had room for her nice furniture. And it is nice furniture, very well built - but no one is ever going to have the space for a 12ft tall curio cabinet. Let it goo.
I like those big cabinets in place of kitchen cabinets. Glass front makes everything look better, I don’t put curios in them. Plates, glasses, bottles, booze, whatever goes in them ends up looking good.
If it was something nice they weren’t wrong. Everything manufactured today is fucking garbage.
You can get good furniture, it’s just really expensive.
So again, hanging on to a proven good item is the correct move.
Agreed. Can still be cut down or modified, and then painted to update it.
The style is wrong though. We have a minimalist modern space, so a big orange cabinet honestly just doesn’t fit. We are allowed to decorate the way we like without being held hostage by our parents and grandparents aesthetic preferences.
which is why I have a wood shop.
If it was nice, they would be keeping it for themselves
You need to look at the positive: this way they make more profit for the megacorporations manufacturing and selling them.
Tap for spoiler
/s
It’s probably an easier decision to make when you were born early enough to own a big house
They inherited the poverty mentality of “hang on to it just in case” while failing to give the “I should pay my fair share so the next generation can survive” one…
So fucking spot on that it’s kind of unbelievable that I’d never thought about this before
Everybody out here complaining that their apartment is not big enough to fit this in but… do you even have 11 friends?
Well all my friends will come with a partner and kids. So if I invite 3 friends that’s already 8 to 12 people.
I have 11 stuffies
I got a 12 pack of beer
Yes but I’m not cooking for 12
Maybe not 11 close friends, but I have enough friends to get 11 people invited to place… I think that counts! If I could fit them.
(also: Enzo Mari > Amazon/Ikea in quality, price, satisfaction)
My grandma’s table can only fit 6 people but it can extend (as seamlessly as moving wood pieces can be) to fit 8, it’s the only shape shifting table I’ve seen.
I have one, my parents have one, and I just found out that the person I’m dating has one (technically her parents have it). So they must not be too uncommon.
Shape shifting tables are actually quite common! There are quite a few types:
- Tilt Top Chair-tables. Hinged closed, it’s a table about the size of a poker table. Hinged open, it’s an armchair, with the tabletop forming the back.
- Drop-leaf tables. I’ve seen these in several shapes but the typical pattern is a long, thin rectangular table with hinged panels that can be folded up to extend the top. They can be folded to as little as 18 inches wide and stowed against a wall, you can open the free side with it still against the wall to seat a few people, or you can slide it away from the wall, open both leaves and have a full size table. Stowage of side chairs is a separate issue. The shakers were fond of drop-leaf tables, and made some truly huge ones that could seat a dozen people or more when unfolded, but would stow very efficiently.
- Extending tables. My dining room table is one of MANY examples, you’ll find them all over the United States because it’s objectively the worst of the lot: The long apron rails aren’t continuous but attached by a slide mechanism. The tabletop is split in half, so you get two table halves that can slide relative to each other. A gap can be opened wide enough to admit one or two lift-out sections to make the table longer. My dining room table can collapse to seat 4 around a (mostly) round table or extended to seat 6. All the additional hardware plus the two extra apron rails necessary make the table heavier than it should be, the slides never work right and if you prefer to have it collapsed, where do you stow the leaves? I guess with the two side chairs you nearly never use.
Subscribe to table facts.
I have an extending table, too. It’s 4 person, extends to 6. But that puts the legs right between your legs when you sit on the sides.
Huh, I’ve only seen dining room tables that could expand using table leafs. The only time I didn’t have that was when I lived away in college because why would we have that if we just ate on the couch lol
I have one! It goes from 2 ppl to 6 people by extending. Found it while thrifting.
Years ago in college my mom tried to dump her old CRT TV on me with a roku.
“we’re leaving this tv with you”
“I don’t want it, if you leave it here I am throwing it out”
“Oh son you could use it to watch netflix”
“or mom i could watch netflix on my phone, my smart tv, my xbox one, my xbox 360, my ps3, my computer, my other computer, my other other computer all of which would be in high resolution. If you leave that here I am putting it where it belongs, in the trash”
This is a shortened version of the conversation that went on far too long with me getting more and more annoyed with being given garbage.
I would take a CRT in a heartbeat. It makes watching 4:3 content feel right, especially older Star Treks.
Allegedly it is good with vintage video games (e.g. NES). The weird idiosyncracies of CRTs were accounted for when developing the games.
Not allegedly, it’s quite true. CRT’s tech approach adds gradients, depth to the colors and softens sharp pixel corners. Any sprite based game will look richer on a CRT, but filters are eh 80% good enough
This video shows the difference quite neatly. (Timestamp included for Earthworm Jim)
Daymn
Not just NES; games were largely designed with CRTs in mind all the way through PS2/Xbox/Gamecube console generation!
Legitimately would love a decent CRT TV (and room for it) to be able to authentically play Point Blank again - light gun games of that era only work on CRTs.
all the way through PS2/Xbox/Gamecube console generation!
You just gonna ignore the poor Dreamcast like that?
My bad!
How could I literally forget Sega’s last, beautiful disaster? 🤦🏻♂️ I spent so much time playing Street Fighter III: Third Strike on it back in the day…
Yeah, CRT’s are awesome in the right hands, not for watching Netflix
One thing I find crazy is that at least half of all monitors today are the same res as CRTs from a quarter century ago. I had a $250 no-name brand CRT that handled 1600x1200 quite beautifully in the 1990s.
Yup, and if having no use for one still means you don’t need one.
They’re obsessed with this idea that people they perceive to be lower on the social hierarchy than them can somehow always have a use for their old stuff. As if using their old stuff is part of the process to become successful like them.
stuff used to be more expensive relative to wages, especially electronics. our parent’s generation were from a time where a TV cost 3 months rent. now a month of rent is 3 TVs. this also accounts for “you’re poor but you have an iPhone” discourse
It is chock full of yummy copper though!
I have a big bread baker’s Hoosier cabinet in my kitchen. I’m not a baker, I’ve never had any use for it.
Very similar to this one, with a flour sifter, and slide-out porcelain steel table:
My older sister shipped it to me without asking me, and then told me it was coming about two days before it arrived. Our mom had just died, and my sister didn’t have room for it, but she “wanted it to stay in the family.”
It is a beautiful piece, solid oak, probably over 100 years old. So, I kept it. It just sits there, taking up space in my barely-big-enough kitchen. I expect when I die, my only son will sell it. I should probably just sell it now, my sister would hate me for it, though.
You should ship it back to your sister without telling her.
I get it, family and all, but “wanted it to stay in the family" is a silly reason to inconvenience someone else.
Maybe buy a small log cabin in the middle of nowhere. https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/867-Lippert-Hollow-Rd_Allegany_NY_14706_M37796-74538 https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-detail/489-Martha-Ave_Olean_NY_14760_M46500-11332 and fill it up with everything.
I should probably just sell it now, my sister would hate me for it, though.
I’m sure you could give her a discounted rate
Now that’s the kind of thing my wife would love to have. Maybe at some point we’ll take away someone else’s space occupier.
We’ve got a few pieces of furniture, the one in really not looking forward to is the musical instruments. We’re talking full grand piano, player piano, pneumatic uprights, etc. They are huge. There is no way my wife won’t want at least one, and I’m probably the only one who knows how to do the maintenance despite it being her parents stuff and she has a few siblings.
You probably already know this, but there is a collectors market for player pianos and other automated musical instruments. See AMICA in the US. (Not sure about non automated ones; heavily depends on the instrument.)
Yeah everything is a player (including the piano), and aside from the instruments themselves there are hundreds of rolls - originals (which my kids saw how they are made with an old Mr. Rogers episode I put on for them), customs my FIL made of his own music, and some modern pop we’ve picked up for them.
And yep, AMICA is a great option, my FIL is a member still I think. We are definitely going to take at least one of them, I have a feeling it will be the big pneumatic upright. Which I’m prepping a controller conversion for to allow him to do midi with it to test playback before making a new roll. The controls all work but I need to replace one of the relays…
And now you know why that’s the one we’ll likely end up taking (and its also one of the bigger ones).
Dude, sell it. Someone else WILL want it and use it. You want money. And your sister will get over it.
You could use it for something other than baking? That is a nice piece of furniture.
I’ll take it
If I was in your place I’d put that cabinet in the living room lmao.
Maybe use the middle compartment as display for Lego and action figures.
I’ll take it to use as a computer desk.
This you?
I’m genuinely curious about this, I’m assuming the top part contains a 40"-ish oled TV and they’re doing some kind of graphical activity with this (design, photo/video editing, etc). Did they fit PC parts somehow within the bottom part? Seems a bit thin for that. But TBH something in this kind of format in a solid stage style case could be very useful in my field for on-site monitoring/testing.
and they’re doing some kind of graphical activity with this (design, photo/video editing, etc)
I imagine they’re not actually using it for anything beyond, “look at this thing we did!”
They have a very prolific YouTube channel, so yeah, editing.
TBH, his current weird laptop with the extendable height screen seems solidly useful.
And he never walked again
Evan still walks! https://youtube.com/@evanandkatelyn
This is pretty much what we did in my first apartment. There were four of us, and we all just circled our monitors around one end of a dining table, and the other end was kept clear for eating, projects workspace, etc… Every night was like an old school LAN party. I’ll admit, it wasn’t the worst setup. It was definitely “college kid in a cramped dorm room” vibes, but that’s pretty much what we were. Getting around the back of the table was kind of a pain, but the only people who ever realistically needed to get back there were the two people who sat on that side.
Mom is in the same boat, that is why she is asking!
Not the same exact boat. They’re just downsizing because all the kids have moved out, and they want to be able to afford going on several vacations a year
Good. Spend everything before the “Healthcare” system steals it
