What items do you still use that belonged to your parents?

Too many to mention.

Clothes, furniture, bric-a-brac, books, kitchen equipment, bedlinen, towels rugs, china, glass, pictures.

Almost all the furniture etc in our house is secondhand. To begin it was junk shop stuff. When older family members died, we kept their good furniture and sold on the junk renovations.

Lucca

ixion

A Poole Pottery tea service.
It was a wedding gift to my parents in 1949 and the school friend who bought it for them is still going strong at 96!

I like that ! Love turquoise

Kettle's on Lucca?

My mum died when I was 3 but I do have her rolling pin and a lovely glass cake stand. I have memories of my Dad making pastry. I also have a large pot full of garden hand tools lifted straight from Dad's greenhouse including my old skipping rope handle he used as a dibber.

M0nica, that's what happened here- I also have the clothes and books and rugs as you do. I have to say, sometimes I wish I didn't - it would be nice to have just one or two pieces instead of SO MANY, albeit happy, memories everywhere. It's hard to thin things out to be honest... ...here's the coat my mum wore most really cold days that's waiting for me to mend the pocket, here's the corner cupboard that always held my paternal grandmother's best (and quite hideous) china that my parents thought was truly beautiful, here's the copper warning pan we used in the winter before hopping into bed in the time before the electric blanket and during power cuts. There's the thimble that didn't fit mum but which belonged to her father - the one she'd handle day by day as she sewed - here's the tailor's shears inherited from my grandfather and the his-and-hers wardrobes my parents bought second hand when they married....

Whilst this is all really lovely, it's hard to find people to pass these on to. Many things I've found I'm able to part with if I record them first. I'm taking photos and making a "memory note" fir my children and taking photos of that too.

Very little is new here. The things I've chosen myself though are mostly really lovely. I expect they will be the things my children will remember in years to come.

My bedside cabinet was a wedding present to my parents 70 years ago.

I agree NotSpagetti, no one will want my bits from family when I die. Well, one neice maybe. She likes retro stuff. But no one else.

That’s the trouble isn’t it. I have lots of things I have kept fir years, and I mean many years.
Have tried to offer odd pieces to dd and don’t think she will want anything, but having kept them fir so long I can’t just clear them out. So they stay.

notspaghetti I only keep things that are still of use to me and am quite happy to get rid of things. I recently sold a lovely 19th century kitchen dresser that belonged to my sister, who died in 1991. I had always loved it and it said so much her taste and her house. 32 years on, we have had an extension built, and the dresser was too tall for the new kitchen, so I sold it. As you say I do have a picture, but that was taken for insurance purposes.

The same with clothes. I kept both my sister's and mother's dressing gowns, they were both fairly new and very warm and each lasted me for years. Ditto my sister had a winter coat I covetted - and kept and wore.

Some things get kept a few years for purely sentimental reasons, and then get donated or sold onwards.

We are lucky that our children are also old furniture people, albeit mid 20th century modern, but I know that they have shed covetuous eyes on some of our house contents. They will take what they want and send the rest to auction, my books will be offered to a specialist bookseller.

But that is what I did with my parents and sisters huse contents. Took what I wanted and disposed of the rest

Apart from usual pictures, ornaments etc I wear my mother's lovely silk scarves, use their white handled knives every day, lots of Delph and China, recipe books, blankets and lots more.

I use mum & dad's cutlery set that they got when I was 11. My mum gave it to me when I left home - some 45 years ago - and it's been used for every meal ever since. The knives, forks & spoons are all smaller than the ones on sale today but I love them dearly and much prefer them to any others.

I've also got Grandma's butter knives which I use every day, and I know my mum used them every day until she passed them on to me. Much nicer than new things.

V3ra

ixion

Oh blimey - ignore the cobwebs on the corner of the ceiling?‍♀️

ixion I have plenty of those, I just tell people my house is a spider sanctuary ?️?️

Mine is too until they actually get festooned ???

i have a letter from my mother....10 Sept 1970 it's a very chatty letter mentioning news of family members and asking after her granchildren . we wrote back and forth couple of times a week anyway she went and posted the letter off to me then went to bed that night and died in her sleep early hours of saturday 12 september 1970... great shock to the family and my two brothers 22 and 24 who lived at home so discovered her.....

ixion

Oh blimey - ignore the cobwebs on the corner of the ceiling?‍♀️

What cobwebs?!

lemsip

i have a letter from my mother....10 Sept 1970 it's a very chatty letter mentioning news of family members and asking after her granchildren . we wrote back and forth couple of times a week anyway she went and posted the letter off to me then went to bed that night and died in her sleep early hours of saturday 12 september 1970... great shock to the family and my two brothers 22 and 24 who lived at home so discovered her.....

Oh, that’s terribly sad but having that letter from your mum must mean the world to you. ❤️

I have the pure white 100% cotton duvet cover which was my mother's it did have two pillowcases to match but they have become so thin now I no longer get use them. I bought plain white ones with a ruffled edge to replace them I love the cover as the cotton is soft and feels beautiful against my skin. I also have a double crocheted blanket she made and I kept two of her sau Evans. They are stainless steel with really strong handles in a nice shape. Each time I use them I think of her hands which once held them. I also kept all her steel knitting needles.

Saucepans not Evans!!!

I have a lovely dark blue glazed plant pot that I grow cosmos in every summer as my late mil did. And a set of beautiful glass sundae dishes also from late mil and her very old Be Ro cook book. (Even though I have a copy of my own when i married in 1984) My daughter has her late granny's nativity set and a wooden tea caddy from her late grandad that she uses for her tubes of paint and paintbrushes.

I have a fancy ceramic lady napkin holder that belonged to my granny. Not very useful but pretty. I have granny’s sauce pot which I use, and a glass cake plate. I inherited two of her cake plates with a note that one was her mother’s and very old. I don’t know which one is old!

An item of furniture always referred to as ‘the desk’.

Top of it is a set of shelves with glass doors, further down a ‘drop down’ part, with little compartments, then below that a number of drawers.

Probably a utility item bought when they married in the late 1940’s.

After mum died, my sister claimed a more valuable sideboard, but I was happy with ‘the desk’. When I said that suited me as the desk held sentimental memories of our childhood, she backtracked and wanted to swap, but I had no intention of giving it up.

I think of my parents whenever I open a door or drawer, and the smell of the wood takes me back to happy times past.

calendargurl, does it squeak as you open the "desk"?

I only have me,i`m still quite usefull though,haha.

timetogo2016 - you’ll be your parent’s treasure then, worth more than any object inherited or left behind.

Absoutely BeEmerald.

I have a small wooden spoon, ideal for stirring sauces in a small pan. I can tell, from the wear on one side that my mum was stirring right-handed, anti-clockwise as I do. That's my heirloom!

My late Dads butter knife and Grandmas glass fruit bowl that apparently my Mum won at the fair when she was a little girl. Nothing so practical to be won at the fair nowadays is there?