I had the mixed fortune to be the child of two packrats, and descended from a long line of packrats. For most of my adult life, I have been gradually easing myself out from under a considerable weight of other peoples' possessions, a task complicated by expectations that I should value those possessions as their original owners valued them. That makes sense when you're talking a fiddle (count 'em, one), a piano, or even a set of table linen or china, but when the accumulation fills a large house (14 rooms) to overflowing and ranges from construction materials to volumes of poetry in Latin (as it did in the case of my parents), you will drive yourself completely nuts if you allow yourself to dwell on the emotional freight that comes with the stuff.

I have no children, and my brothers also are childless. Many of our extended network of cousins have children, however, and some of them have learned to duck and run when they hear I'm coming just in case I happen to have a rocking chair or a box of books in the car that I'm sure they could use. They often can, but people get tired of always being on the receiving end.

In normal families, movable property disseminates among the descendants until it falls apart; in ours, largely because of my mother's acquisitive habits, a heck of a lot of stuff (some of it very nice) concentrated in one place -- my parents' house, where it was meticulously preserved. The 20-year project of redistributing all that stuff has taught me one very important lesson: the value of any item is entirely subjective. When what you really need is 18 square feet of floor space, even a fine old Heintzman piano that has been in the family since 1900 can be more of a burden than an asset.

I have not become totally callous, however. I have sold a fair few of my mother's prizes over the years, but I always try to give family stuff to a relative. What they do with it is their business, but at least it's off my slop chit -- along with the aforementioned emotional freight!