What should I do with my parents' old wedding presents?

I would donate them, but I’m a minimalist and can’t stand non-useful things to lay around for long. I am actually in much the same boat with family heirlooms, not quite sure when I can feel good about handing them off the the younger generation, who thinks of it more as ‘junk’ than cool family heirlooms.

I’ll be in the same situation although I don’t have much of my parent’s stuff. It will be my stuff that my kids won’t want/don’t have room for. There is something called the Swedish death clean which is cleaning out your stuff so your kids don’t have to. I’m working up to starting that but some things will be hard.

I say donate them somewhere.

Don’t continue to store them. It’ll be another 20 years, and then when you die, someone else will have to deal with it.

Donate or dumpster.

Donate, unless you can use them on the machinery around your property.

This is getting to be a common problem as baby boomers start to downsize into retirement, and their kids have no need for old used things. The local consignemnt shops are full, and Goodwill and Salvation Army can’t handle anymore furnture.

If they mean nothing to you—you have no memories or associations with them—you probably won’t regret parting with them. You didn’t even know they were there, right?—so “without” after disposal is the same as “without” before disposal.

Depending on where you live, you could just leave them on the curb in front of your house one night. If they’re there in the morning, you don’t have a very enterprising homeless population living nearby.

Remember that animal shelters go through a lot of clean towels. Probably people shelters too.

Some things are probably worth selling, but if you don’t want the hassle, choose an agency that serves a special population of your choice and let them sic their volunteers on eBay.

You are all so sensible and correct! I did not even know they existed so there is no connection. – except that they’re 80 years old.
There are 2 sets of towels and they are quite luxurious.
I will not put them back in storage. I will consider them a Father’s Day present and will use them. They will make me smile.

Thanks Mom! Thanks Dad! .

^^^ That seems like the perfect choice. Even though you had no lingering connection to the towels, they quickly became meaningful for you. If not, you wouldn’t have been confliected, and you wouldn’t have come to Fluther for our thoughts. Material items can gain fast significance, often for very unexpected reasons.

Enjoy the towels! Every time you see your parents’ monogram, you can think of them and feel happy.

Donate them to Good Will or sell them on eBay. Either way, somebody who can appreciate them will be buying them. Don’t know about where you live, but in my town we have several antique houses that will buy them off of you to enhance the look of something really old that they are selling. When my parents passed, my brother & I donated to Good Will because neither of us had a place to put them!!!

It is a problem many of us share. I recently decided to stop storing some of my moms stuff. I looked on ebay to see if they had any value and found page after page of the identical items. I donated them to goodwill, but I doubt if they are sellable.

I’d probably keep most of it if it was sentimental to me. I might use what’s usable. I’m not sure. It will probably be easier for your kids to part with those things than you.

I agree as people age it’s nice to downsize how much stuff you have to make it easier on people left behind to deal with your possessions, but some choice items I think you don’t have to go through the emotional stress of parting with those things.

I’m stressed out about the idea that my sister and I don’t have children and some of the lovely items I have from my family won’t have any meaning to anyone. Makes me want to create a museum, but who would come? Lol.

@JLeslie, they could have more meaning to someone else than you realize.
Thirty years ago I was in the hospital alone. My family was hundreds of miles away. I had a son. The sonograms had been uncertain for gender, so my mom had sent two outfits to bring home baby, one pink, one blue. She told me whichever one I didn’t need to just gift a friend or whatever worked for me.
So, after my son was born, when a nurse came in for a casual look see, I asked her if there was any woman on the floor with a new baby girl, and no family to help her.
The nurse gave me a puzzled look. I explained that I wasn’t certain whether I was having boy or girl, then I held up the package containing the pretty pink ensemble.
Her face lit up, and she said she knew exactly who should have it.
It was completely anonymous. I never met whoever, and she knew nothing about where it came from.
I knew enough from the nurse’s reaction it was going to a deserving baby girl.

Update…
This morning, I used one set of towels when I took my shower. Nice!
I got joy out of them and thought of my parents.

This is much better than storing them in another box.
Thanks for the advice.

Donate.