Thinking about junk heirlooms.
I don’t mean family heirlooms that feel like junk but that you can’t get rid of because they’re important. I mean the opposite – things of no importance that were passed down through generations incidentally.
My grandmother owned a dish towel with a distinct checkerboard pattern. It wasn’t important to her, just one of many dish towels. When she died my parents kept some of her stuff because of sentimental value, but some just because it was perfectly fine stuff they could use, and they ended up with it.
Years later I was moving to another state and my parents asked if I needed any old towels since they were getting new ones. I got a box of rags, which included my grandmother’s dish towel (which had been downgraded to ‘rag’ by then, tbh it was in that category even when my grandmother owned it.) I literally have a rag that’s been passed down through multiple generations.
It’s not sentimental or anything, I still use it as a rag, but sometimes I look at it and picture it on the handle of my grandmother’s oven door and feel shrimp emotions.