I thought this was interesting in light of my recent post on aspirational clutter. While blogger jlsathre had assumed that she would end up bringing home most of the contents of her deceased parents’ house when she and her sister cleaned it out, she left with only a very few items.
In The Things I Didn’t Keep of Mom and Dad’s, she writes:
Leaving the house that first day, I knew that it wasn’t the things that remained inside that I wanted to keep. I did take a few things– the candy dish, a ledger with page after page of Dad’s handwriting, and an address book with pages of Mom’s. But mainly what I kept were things I didn’t have to carry. I had found that I didn’t need very much. I already had the stories.
Stories without things? Absolutely the best souvenirs you can ask for.
Things without stories? They’ll clog your closets and your mind.
Not every item that we inherit has a story, and I think it’s an unfair burden to think that we have to keep a thing only because it belonged to someone in particular.
Stories vs. things? I’m picking stories every time.
Entirely Adequate 
Suzanne, I have a few items that belonged to my maternal grandfather that were obviously of some value to him, yet I haven’t the first clue what story there is to them. Anyone who would know is dead. I’m not nearly as pack-ratty as some, but I’ve still had a hard time discarding them. I wrote about my furry bottle once:
http://bowilliams.com/2010/11/the-mystery-of-my-furry-bottle/
I’m all for keeping things that I have an attachment to, emotional or otherwise, story or not. What I see happening, however, is people dying with houses full of stuff, and their children and grandchildren feeling pressure to keep it ALL. The pressure to keep everything means that they can’t enjoy the special things, the furry bottles of their family, if you will.