Over the years, my Mom gave us each several keepsakes---including a tin box with wooden spools of thread--I will never use the thread because they were from her Mom and her. And a set of wood bookends that my dad made in a shop class--they used them in their bookcase headboard all during my childhood. And my Mom's original box camera from her teens. And I carry a spool of blue thread of hers that when she died at my sister's house, I went to secure her house and get the papers and any valuables--when I picked up the sewing box out of the back end of my car, this spool rolled out--it's traveled with me everywhere for the last 4 years (my sister had dibs the sewing box, I got the machine).