Older people are the "Depression and World War II" generation. They learned from their folks or their own experience not to use the "good" things they had. They saved them "in case". When my grandmother moved about 20 years ago, we found tons of linens and dishes that she had never ever used. Some of them were 30 or more years old, and had never been unwrapped. She gave them all to us, as she was moving into her daugher's home with no room to store her "good" stuff she had saved all those years. What she took with her with some really threadbare linens that she said were "good enough" to be used. It made me sad that she didn't use them for herself.