I have a piece of stemware from their wedding set that I borrowed many years ago for the first Passover I hosted. They sometimes attend and we joke about it because I still use it every year.
Exactly. We accumulated three sets of silver and three sets of china from various relatives.None of it dishwasher safe. We managed to unload one set on a daughter.
When we drove around the country two years ago we loaded some of the stuff up in the CRV and dumped it on unsuspecting kids.
I have a very Slavic-looking hand painted ceramic bowl with handles (ears) that is a favored kitty water bowl.
Years ago, I brought something or other to my parents for Thanksgiving, and my mom exclaimed over it - she’d forgotten all about it. Apparently she’d had it herself since before my mom and dad even met.
Uhh, more details please? What kind of tools? How were they made. And why was the house decrepit? Did Unc Ed spend his days building geegaws, instead of using those geegaws?
When my Dad lost his sight and could no longer read, I grabbed some books from his library. For the most part, they were first editions, and inscribed to him by the author. Dad personally knew a surprising amount of published authors, and their works still occupy space on my shelves.
Another treasure that I obtained when Dad wasn’t looking, was an “Usher’s O.V.G.” match holder. See an example here:
According to what I’ve learned, it would have occupied a space on the top of the bar in a British pub, in the early part of the 20th century. If you didn’t have a match for your cigarette, well, grab one from here, strike it, and light up. It came from my grandmother, who likely obtained it from a relative who was a combatant in WWI, and probably pocketed it when he was in a British pub. Dad got it when Grandmother died. Anyway, Dad had so much bric-a-brac in his house that I figured that he would never notice that it was missing. So, like that long-ago relative probably did, I just slid it into my coat pocket. I still have it.
Half the things in our house originally belonged to my parents, including the house itself. Fortunately, they had extremely good taste, and owned lots of original Art Deco and Danish Modern pieces.
I’ve got a bunch of my father’s power tools. He “lent” them to me to work on my house, but his handyman days are long over and he’ll never ask for them back.
Years ago, when I was going on a ski trip, Mom lent me a couple of bulky sweaters, a beautiful fluffy cap, and matching scarf. It turned out they weren’t ideal ski wear, but I didn’t have many winter clothes so I never gave them back. We live in Florida, so I don’t actually wear them, but now they gather dust in my dresser instead of Mom’s.
I got a Mexican-style blanket and a couple of screwdrivers from my dad at some point. I ended up with all my parents’ stuff after they died so it’s little difficult to keep track of what came before and what came after.
After my dad died, my mom gave me a heavy white ceramic serving dish that he’d appropriated himself when he was in the Marines. She did ask if I wanted it, so that may not be in the spirit of this thread. In fact, Mom’s been downsizing her stuff for several years, trying to foist a bunch of it on to the 5 of us sibs. I’ve resisted most, since I’m also trying to downsize and foist stuff off on my daughter. 
Going back lots farther, when my paternal grandmother moved from her house to an apartment near where we lived, Dad convinced her to give me her Singer treadle sewing machine. I’m pretty sure he did that to keep it from his sisters, a couple of whom were ever so slightly greedy. I still have it.
When my father, who left us when I was two, died a couple of decades ago from alcohol-related liver failure, somehow I became the recipient of his entire estate: an old greeting card box containing a few letters, a broken timex watch, a tattered wallet containing a couple of pictures of me and my brother as kids and teenagers (don’t know where he got those from), a death certificate, and his Elks club membership card.
Even though I had no memory of him as a dad, and only met him briefly twice in my adult life, I still have that box of junk. I’ll probably have it until I die. It seems cruel to just toss away the last things the guy had in life.
Sometimes I think about him hauling around pictures of the kids he walked away from and looking at them witting in his one-room apartment over the Elks club. The pull of alcohol being stronger than love of family, but the love of family was apprently still there. It’s very sad to contemplate. And that damned box makes me contemplate it every time I see it.
When we moved into our family house in 1969, the gentleman across the street, who was a photographer, gifted us with a old photo of our new house. Now to put this in perspective, the tiny pine tree to the living room side of the steps wound up transplanted to a neighbors yard, and last I saw it was 60’ high.
Bob even hand made the frame for the photo. this being being before frames were available for reasonable prices. So I was a tad put out that my mom had hung it on the wall for the new owners of the house.
It came right off the wall. 
When I moved out to get married, I took a small shelf my dad had made off the wall of my bedroom. I don’t know why I thought I was entitled to it, in retrospect it should have stayed with the room. It’s now sitting in our garage, not being used, but every time I suggest it should maybe go back to the wall I took it from, my wife says no, we might want it for something.
There is one item that I sort of just took from my parents.
I have the complete set of “My Book House” story books that belonged to my dad from when he was a kid. He had held onto them when he grew up and had his family. I have very fond memories of him reading stories from those books to my brother and I when we were young.
When Mrs. D and I moved into our first house together, my parents took that opportunity to bring all the stuff they had been keeping in storage from my childhood and they didn’t notice that this book set was in the mix. So when I went through all that stuff, I was very pleasantly surprised to find the book set. I just didn’t tell them we had it for a few years. My dad eventually found out I had it and threatened to take it back, but he never followed through and eventually gave me “official” possession of the set.
So where are they now? In storage in my basement. We moved to another house that didn’t have the book shelves to put them out.
When I moved into a new apartment in 2004 (not from my parents’ home, but from a house I had lived in with my best friend), I borrowed a step ladder from my parents for the renovations. It was already old and had the scars and paint spots from many years of use, but it’s a solid steel (not aluminum) ladder that still does a great job. My parents already had bought a modern aluminum step ladder, so the ugly but functional steel ladder stayed in my household to this day and has served me well, including another move.
My baby brother💜. He was 20 at the time.I continued to share him though.
I have ended up with a stainless steel platter which is the absolute best for barbecuing.
My Dad was the steak guy when I was growing up, and that’s how I learned to cook a steak. The platter has so much sentimental value to me.
Long ago, like 40+ years long ago, I had a brief opportunity to liberate some items from my birth mother’s house. They were things I knew she would never use again and would never miss.
I have a ladle, a flour sack pastry cloth and another cloth used for preparing bread dough, best described as a baker’s couche with wooden slats inserted into large seams at each end. They all belonged to my grandmother. I use each very regularly and have no regrets about having rescued them. My mother never noticed. Knew she wouldn’t.