Thanks for your response, Kate. My argument is not that our children should want all our stuff, but that many children think they have a right to insist their parents downsize their belongings, and many times their homes, before they die, so as to save their children from any trouble going through it all when they die.

I certainly don't want my daughter to have to spend weeks plowing through a bunch of stuff that should have gone in the trash while I was alive. I am doing my best to eliminate that burden. I constantly clean out cabinets and closets and send things to the thrift store or the trash.

But the things I love and use I want to keep until I die, and I don't think anyone gets to decide for me what I can keep and what I have to get rid of. My mother used to fill my trunk everytime I visited and a lot of what she gave me ended up in the giveaway pile. I didn't feel guilty. I saw it as helping her clean out her stuff. Her mother did the same thing to her, so it was kind of a family tradition.

I check with my daughter before I get rid of things, but I am not keeping things I don't want hoping she will want them. I am not running a storage facility. There may be parents who do that but I am not one of them. If it's in my way and I'm not using it, out it goes.

I'm sorry your parents burden you with gifts you don't want, but I think you are well within your rights to regift, thrift or trash any of it that is of no use to you.

Thanks again for your thoughtful response.