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Interesting...I keep reading that millennials are not into collecting stuff. That bears that out. Lots of them moving into smaller townhouses, too, instead of single family homes.

Bingo. Few of them want to detail-clean a carved wooden chair or bedstead, polish the mahogany, silver or crystal or keep fabric upholstery spotted and vacuumed. They like polyester sofas and wipe-clean IKEA stuff. The inevitable result of "liberation."

So my advice to anyone needing to downsize but holding onto old stickware, caneware and overstuffs of sentimental value for the kids is this:

a) Make the grown kids take 90% what they want now, and
b) dump the rest that you won't want in your easier-to-care-for new space, because:
c) you should use your money on your own needs, not on the extra real estate you would need to act as a storage facility for your kids; and
d) the kids are not going to appreciate having to dump it when you die.
e) Don't even try to guilt-trip them.

And forget foisting it on the grandchildren; they don't even know how to polish furniture, repair, reuse or clean anything. Or cook, either. Also forget about them using your wedding stuff to sit down around a table for a meal, have a prayer and make polite conversation. Eating is what the tv room is for. Even holidays, it's fill your plate from the reheated big-box store frozen foodstuff in aluminum and plasticware set out on the kitchen counters and wander around the house to find someplace to sit with your paper plate on your lap; striving professionals are too (busy, entitled, clueless, "liberated") to prepare a sit-down.

“the kids are not going to appreciate having to dump it when you die.“

Yes, it puts an unfair guilt on them. They may feel obligated to keep some pieces that they really don’t want.

My sister moved a bunch of our folks stuff into her basement to hand down to her kids. Now they are going to move/downsize, her kids don’t want that old fashioned crap, and they live 100, 1,000, and 3,000 miles away to boot. So she’s getting rid of it now after having cluttered up her basement with it for over ten years.

As you say, get rid of it as soon as you can and don’t store it.

Good advice to give it to them now, make it their memories not your memories..

I prolly have 35K in soviet militaria

Means something to me as I spent the bulk of mylife chasing Ivan all around the watery bits of the world and some of her deserts too

But to the rest its meaningless.

Liquidate it, Gift cards work LOL