Tomorrow night I’m setting the table with my great grandmother’s china. It’s moved with me in a box, unopened, through my last four homes. Before that it sat in my parents’ basement for over 20 years. And before that, it lived in my grandparents’ storage locker. Isn’t that what you do with the good china? You keep it safe.
This year I decided that safe wasn’t the point. If it sits in a box, it isn’t a family heirloom, it’s a storage problem with a nice pattern. So out it comes, for a dinner party with friends, and if a plate chips, a plate chips. I’m even going a little further and putting it in the dishwasher. It’s that or it goes to the consignment shop, and I choose to enjoy it. After all, that’s what it was made for.
The china isn’t the only thing that came out of a box this fall. I also sent every box of family photos and albums we had to a scanning service, so the pictures live on my phone now instead of in the basement. I’ll report back on how that went, and whether I’d do it again, in a separate post.I’ve been thinking about this a lot because of a report that came out this fall. The Great Junk Transfer Report found that 63% of Canadians don’t want their relatives sorting through their belongings after they’re gone, and 25% have never had the conversation with anyone. Nearly half said they would rather inherit nothing at all than deal with a relative’s things.I believe those numbers, because I’ve stood in the basements. In my work I help families sell homes that have been lived in for thirty or forty years, and the sorting is always the part that wears everyone down. Not the market, not the paperwork, not the showings. The boxes. The hard part is almost never the stuff itself. It’s that nobody decided while they still could, and now the people left behind have to guess what mattered.The families who find it easier have one thing in common. Someone started early, while it was still their decision. A closet this month. The basement in the spring. A conversation with the kids about what they actually want, which is usually less than you think. [Your boys line here, or cut this bracket.] The things that stayed were the things that got used, like a set of plates that finally made it onto a table.If you’re in Ottawa and starting to think about a smaller place, I have a checklist I use with clients to sort a house room by room, in an order that doesn’t leave you exhausted by week two. Send me an email or a text with the subject DOWNSIZE and I’ll send it over. And if you’re not sure what your house is worth these days, I’d be happy to discuss it, no strings attached.Source: The Great Junk Transfer Report 2026, 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and Talker Research.