My grandparents and great grandparents are dead, so they don't have to live with the embarrassment of having their descendent reduced to being "the sort of person who buys his own furniture," but that's progress. I am keeping some of it, and we all do a purge every few years just in case, but I find it's the photographs that are the hardest to destroy. Something that meant so much to someone else. Like tears in rain, I suppose.