{"id":821,"date":"2026-08-28T04:14:57","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T04:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=821"},"modified":"2026-08-28T04:14:57","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T04:14:57","slug":"stop-binning-your-heirlooms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityflowjournal.com\/?p=821","title":{"rendered":"Stop binning your heirlooms"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Middle-aged heirs are rejecting their parents\u2019 prized possessions. \u201cThe children have no room for the oak furniture, they don\u2019t want the silver card cases and we have to explain it will be sold for whatever we can get,\u201d one auctioneer\u00a0recently told\u00a0The Times<\/i>. We are invited to imagine a definite rupture within family trees: storied old objects gently passed along branches from aged hands to younger ones, until they meet\u00a0those of\u00a0ruthless Gen X-ers, and are rushed to the auction\u00a0house\u00a0or the tip.<\/p>\n

Read more Mark Zuckerberg got what he deserved<\/a><\/p>\n

At the same time,\u00a0we are told\u00a0that young people these days live in thrift shops and antique stores at the weekend, and adore anything\u00a0vintage\u00a0or \u201cpre-loved\u201d. Mahogany tables feel more soulful than Ikea flat-packs, and recycling is environmentally friendly after all. It might seem there is an obvious solution: the\u00a0kids could be rescuing post-loved\u00a0objects directly from their grandparents\u2019 estates, bypassing the middle-aged Marie Kondo wannabes in between.\u00a0But I suspect that here, too, there is a reluctance to dutifully absorb aesthetic judgments imposed from beyond the grave. Like their rebellious fifty-something elders, Gen Z-ers appear to have little wish to be tied down by a specific familial past, though they don\u2019t mind plundering those of strangers.<\/p>\n

Sometimes the urge to ditch is understandable. Though it feels like a betrayal, I recently declined the opportunity to own a huge tapestry of a waterborne Newfoundland dog holding a lifeless drowning girl in its mouth, embroidered by my great-great-grandmother and left to me by my grandmother. (My mother says it is inspired by an\u00a0equally dramatic Landseer.) The family mementos I keep close by me are less alarming in the middle of the night: a sewing box,\u00a0though I don\u2019t really sew;\u00a0some nested tables; a silver napkin ring with the name of some earlier\u00a0Kathleen etched upon it; a tea set left by an aunt; a pot stand made by my grandfather. There is also a Huntley and Palmers biscuit tin from the Forties, with a handwritten note taped to it in familiar script: \u201cHandle with Care. Not wanted on Voyage.\u201d In future, I will face more difficult choices as larger numbers of objects potentially head my way: further tea sets, each the pride of a female forebear who carefully\u00a0saved up\u00a0for it; \u201cbest\u201d crockery; a writing desk; a wardrobe and matching dressing table;\u00a0shelves\u00a0of clothbound books.<\/p>\n

The most obvious reason for the Great Gen X Baggage Shedding \u2014 aside from all the Freudian ones \u2014 is that such items speak to a way of life that vanished rapidly, just as people of my age were growing up. When trying to scale the property ladder now, you don\u2019t want to be dragging the dreaded brown furniture around with you. Working mothers have no need of cake stands or\u00a0fish knives: relative to gregarious mid-century housewives, they barely entertain. Ancient christening gowns languish in MDF drawers for want of church services and babies. Unlike my fastidious grandparents, I let teabags stew in the mug, and I don\u2019t keep silver polish. I hardly use pen and paper, so have scant need of a desk.<\/p>\n

In years to come, perhaps people will face similar dilemmas: should they keep the matcha whisk and the yoga pillow in memory of granny, or toss? Do these antique hair straighteners spark joy? But as these examples suggest, it is hard to imagine which items present generations will pass on to subsequent ones. So many of our culturally prized objects are electronic, with future malfunction and technological obsolescence built in. Most of us can\u2019t sew or build or carve anything. Generally, we don\u2019t leave many deliberate marks on the material world for later fingers to retrace. Lost in digital landscapes, we barely notice our own homes, let alone consider which bits of them might be worth saving for posterity.<\/p>\n

As the virtual world continues to expand, this trend is only going to deepen. More e-books instead of well-thumbed pages; digital photos in the cloud, not albums; pieces of music floating free of discernible instruments or turntables. Fewer spatiotemporally located things. Dislocated information, available everywhere simultaneously, is being prioritized over things that can only ever be in one place at a time.<\/p>\n

In recent surveys, asking that hackneyed question \u2014 what one item would you grab in a fire, assuming that all your loved ones were safe? \u2014 laptops and phones\u00a0topped the list. Obviously, this is not because these things are considered by their users to be irreplaceable objects, with particularly beautiful designs or strong emotional associations. Indeed, phones and laptops are eminently replaceable; they break or get superseded by new versions all the time. The attachment to devices is simply because they act as portals to parcels of digital information people feel they can\u2019t do without \u2014 not even for the short time\u00a0it would take to buy another one.<\/p>\n

Read more The great Covid reckoning<\/a><\/p>\n

As the philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in his brilliant little book\u00a0Non-things<\/i>, the everything-everywhere-all-once aspect of digital technology can induce a megalomaniacal mindset: \u201cI swipe away the information that does not interest me. I zoom in on the content that I like. I have the world firmly in my grip.\u201d Physical objects are refreshingly obstinate in comparison. They require dexterity and patience to unlock their possibilities, not just cack-handed jabs and swipes on glass. If you break something you really love, there is a cost; you can\u2019t just turn to the cloud and recreate everything you valued about that thing, hosted in a new body.<\/p>\n

And,\u00a0as Han also notes,\u00a0real objects stabilize us.\u00a0Early modern\u00a0philosophers fretted about what happened to physical things when human minds were not there to experience them: could they really\u00a0be\u00a0said to exist at all?\u00a0\u00a0But in truth,\u00a0we owe the things\u00a0more than they owe us. We need contact with entities that will stubbornly persist as themselves during radical human changeability. Otherwise our anxiously roaming minds will lose the plot. We didn\u2019t really know this, perhaps, until the speed and insubstantiality of the digital world made it plain.<\/p>\n

Generally,\u00a0acquaintance with tangible objects reminds us that we too are finite and occupy a limited portion of space. We are not just borderless networks of information; we are not clouds.\u00a0Family heirlooms do this too; but more importantly, they also locate us in time. Memories are stored up in their contours. Or as the philosopher of art Carolyn Korsmeyer puts it, there is \u201ctransitivity of touch\u201d: in touching an heirloom, you become a link in a chain, stretching back to other earlier people. You mentally connect the object\u2019s present, here with you now, to its past; which usually means connecting up points in your own life too. For this reason, mementos offer psychological containment to owners hurtling through different life phases and rapidly changing conditions. Like steadfast friends, they attest to the existence of an unbroken\u00a0narrative line in a life,\u00a0even if its owner can\u2019t fill in all of the gaps.<\/p>\n

To some extent, you could say the same of any treasured objects from your\u00a0own history,\u00a0and never mind those that connect you to relatives and forebears. The bottle that held the wine that night you proposed; the letters from schoolfriends; and so on. So why do you need other people\u2019s things to tell your own story?<\/p>\n

I suppose the answer depends on whether you think of yourself as essentially part of a particular family, metaphysically speaking. I do, though I\u2019m sure I used to deny it. We are not self-standing\u00a0organisms. We\u00a0each have a history that preceded our own births, involving many other characters, each with their own beloved or useful things. No matter what fantastic Victorian or Edwardian swag the Gen Z-ers are now dragging home, the most perfect vintage stuff for you, personally, is not to be found at any auction \u2014 or at least, not unless your mother took it there first.<\/p>\n

Read more Why corpses shouldn\u2019t be sacred<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Middle-aged heirs are rejecting their parents\u2019 prized possessions. \u201cThe children have no room for the oak furniture, they don\u2019t want the silver card cases and we have to explain it will be sold for whatever we can get,\u201d one auctioneer\u00a0recently told\u00a0The Times. 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