I hope nobody is too sad about things I may leave undone. I really try to stay on track, but to me it's all about following my muse, and sometimes she isn't the most sensible muse around. It's a creative process, and having more things, including a small hoard of stuff that may look to someone else as if I was not sufficiently task oriented, is just what I find necessary and congenial. They represent options and being able to jump in when the mood strikes without the rather tedious chore of planning something specific and then going shopping for just what's required, at a time when I'd rather be sewing than shopping. I can see I'm going to have to make more of an effort to educate my someday heirs to what this stuff means to me. There is nothing particularly sad about a pile of things that added a lot of enjoyment to my life just by being here ready for whenever I might have a use for them.
I don't have the same attitude at all toward more utilitarian aspects of my life. My kitchen is pretty well organized, and there's not much there that isn't useful in a concrete sort of way, even if I do hang on to things like a cherry pitter and a bunny cake pan. If you have organized space for something and use it once in awhile, it's not really a hoard.
Too bad that woman's family doesn't have anyone inclined to use her stash, but we all have different interests, and at least they saw to it that the fabric went to a cause that she would have been pleased about. To me, it would be sad to reach a point in life when I might want to get rid of things I still love because of a fear of the family being burdened too much. Hey, I changed their diapers and wiped their snotty noses. It's not expecting too much that they can get my fabric stash to someone who will enjoy it and/or use it for charitable work. Throwing it out is not an option. That would be sad!