What do you own that have been passed through the generations?

A dinner service and matching tea set, rings and other jewellery, some silver items – and masses of love.

A brass bedpan that was my Welsh Grandmothers I’m ashamed to say it’s in the garage.

My grandfather was a cabinet maker and made a very complicated desk with a secret compartment. It was in my mother's house as I grew up, then my house and is now with my daughter.

My grandfather made a dolls house for my mum (she was born in 1928). I played with it, then my daughter and now my two granddaughters do. We have added updated furniture for each generation although we have kept the washing machine with the mangle part from when I used it in the early sixties. Of course the latest recipients don't have a clue what it is!

My Mum’s dinner service and maternal grandmother’s glass trifle bowl. I used them all on Christmas Day. I also have my Mum and aunt’s china tea sets and a lovely cake stand that belonged to my Gran. They were used a few months ago when I did my granddaughter’s birthday in afternoon tea style.

2 framed photographs of my grandparents.

My great grandmother’s wedding tea service. My great aunt’s
wedding tea service. Another great aunt’s Wedgewood collection. My grandmother’s wedding ring, makes me sad she died age 31 giving birth to my mother.

A collection of journals from my great grandfather, he was a baptist minister and wrote of the Great Depression, his friendship with Keir Hardie the first Labour mp

An oak dresser that belonged to my parents (from part of a farmhouse kitchen from my grandparents). My dad was placed in a large drawer as a baby for afternoon naps). It has been painted and new handles put on and looks lovely in my daughter’s home.

Apart from jewellery; a complete set of Dicken’s novels that were a school prize for being top in Latin and English in 1913, when she was 13.

Meant to include ‘ given to my Grandmother’.

A 'wag at the wa' clock which was my gran's and is now with my son. I have two vases which were also my gran's. Two bronze elephants (small) which belonged to an aunt who was given them when she lived in India before the war. My father's bunnets which I keep. My grandson likes to wear them. He's two. ?

Where do I start? I have a trunk full of treasured heirlooms including my mother's 1940s shoes she wore when courting, father's RAAF log book, 1930s Box brownie camera (used for 60 years!) and 200 letters. Amongst the things I'm using are a beautiful painted mirror (1950s or older), an 1890 Singer sewing machine and a Victorian preserving pan. I could go on but the list is long!

My grandmother's tea set which she received as a wedding present.
My husband's grandmother's desk which lives in the hall. It has two drawers inside, filled with little useful things she put in there. Nails, tin tacks, paper clips. My daughter is to have it eventually.

I had quite a lot of stuff including two Victorian china tea sets, bone handled cutlery, big old copper kettle and coal scuttle, which I sold when we downsized and moved here. A shame to part with things but I didn't want to end up keeping them in the loft and then eventually my son having to decide what to do with them. I still have quite a few things including a Tudor 'bible box' which belonged to one grandfather, big stamp collection belonging to the other which I intend to sell, very old brass candlesticks passed down to my grandmother and the very useful and now trendy wooden trunk made by the village carpenter for my great grandmother's clothes etc when she left home to go into service in the 1880s. Basically I try to have as little 'stuff' as I can because my son is an only child with a demanding job and I don't want to burden him with the decisions I had to make when clearing my parents' house, so just a few things that have been passed down that he might like to keep and that's it.

Bandy legs and buck teeth passed down from my father’s side.
My paternal grandmother’s engagement ring and a beautiful set of glass scent bottles she left to me.

Interestingly, I had a long and lingering look at the Angel atop the GC Christmas tree last week. Passed down from Mum to me and now theirs. Many beautiful memories tied in with her. Oh yessss........

So much, I cannot list it all. Most of our beautiful Victorian furniture, rugs, china, cutlery kitchen implements, even a set of curtains.

I am, and have always been a 'second-hand rose' and look to second-hand before I buy new, so when family members died and we were clearing their houses, my instinct was to see how much of their belongings, with all the memories that go with them should be kept and used. I am not one for clutter, so the incorporation of furniture into our home, meant our poorer quality old furntiure went to auction or charity.

There is a table that tells all you need to know about how our family works.In approx 1983, I bought a simple mahogany writing desk, which I used as a dressing table. Around 1988 I bought a more eleaborate desk and gave the desk to one of my sisters. She died in 1991 and my other sister, claimed the desk. In 1995, she moved house and my mother was delighted to have the table as a crafting desk in one of the bedrooms. The table stayed with my parents until my father died in 2007. At which point the desk came back to me and is again a dressing table in our holiday home in France.

However, I have no qualms with parting with stuff, once it is no longer needed and I have ascertained that neither of my children want it. I recently sold a beautiful pine dresser that belonged to my sister, and a set of chairs that came from my mother.

And of course those old teasets might have looked lovely but, like the bone handled cutlery and the huge old carving set with silver mounted horn handles, you can’t put them in the dishwasher! My mum used them and washed them up by hand but I don’t have that level of patience!

All kinds of things passed down from families---too much !!
I stop at times thinking of poor D when she has to dispose of it, it doesn't seem fair but what are you supposed to do as I love it all whilst I'm here to admire most of it, including a tiny metal Hoover cleaner which was modelled on the present day one.
Old Dresden figurines made before the factory was destroyed.

I put my old teasets in the dish washer without any problem. also silver and silver plate cutlery and dishes. I do not have any bone or horn handles, except for the Christmas turkey carving set, and that has laready been put away ready for next Christmas.

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I have a couple of pieces of jewellery belonging to my great grandmother, a chair from my great grandfather and most precious are letters. There are some from my great grandfather - disintegrating, sadly, - and no fewer than seven bound volumes of letters written by my grand parents to each other during WWI and to their parents between 1899 and 1912.

I have some babysham glasses and a collection of glass birds, a clock, a couple of old chairs that have been reupholstered, a tall boy which we use as a gin cabinet and some old handmade art stuff from my Mother's cousin. The only thing we have from my husbands side is a miners lamp

oh I have a couple of very old mirrors too