The Hand-Me-Downs That Make Our Homes

My very favorite belongings are ones that belonged to someone else in my family first: The cutting board my dad and grandfather created from a slab of butcher block. The typewriter that sits on the shelf of my childhood bedroom, a graduation gift my grandmother got before she went to college. Belongings, passed down, can function as illustrations: Of a life, of a self, of a home.

I was mystified by an article from 2015 that made its way across my social media feeds, positing that millennials don’t want furniture or belongings previously owned by their parents, half an example of millennials being transient and lacking space to store the family dining table, half a suggestion that generations are too different to have literal stuff in common. As I looked at the chest my grandfather built that gets used as a coffee table, or my mom’s gold-framed arts posters from across Kentucky, I couldn’t fathom them not being in the home of me or one of my siblings someday.

When I thought more on it, I realized most people I knew were clamoring for hand-me-downs of some kind from family members, older friends, or neighbors. It certainly seems, to some degree, like an economic side effect: “Home” is a privileged conversation. According to data from 2018, nearly half of 18–34-year-olds were “rent burdened,” which means they are paying more than 30% of their income in…