This is a fun topic! My "hope chest" was the trunk that my great-grandmother brought to the U.S. in 1905. I had all kinds of projects that I made for 4-H and a bunch of cutesy salt and peppers in it. My sister now has the trunk (I think), and I have no idea how or when I dispersed the contents. Who cares? The fun part of it was putting things into the hope chest and dreaming about the future. All of this was before women's lib, and I wasn't married until I was 28, so I imagine I just used most of the stuff, except the salt and peppers, which probably went into a garage sale.