ponder the next move

I spent the spring helping my parents move from a 4 story, 4 bedroom house with full basement and over-sized garage with storage loft (see where I am going here) into a 2 bedroom apartment with a 5x5 storage cage. There was a lot of angst involved in this move-mostly through the realization on my mother's part that they could not take everything. And she saved everything! And I do mean everything...one work day yielded 17 full bags of trash, a car full of donatables, and 10 boxes of "can't part withs."
Rapidly following this lightbulb moment was more distress caused by the revelation that my siblings and I did not want much of what was going to be left over-counterpointed by the fact that my mother wanted everything she wasn't taking to go to family or friends-no strangers and certainly not out in the trash. We have all had our own homes for many many years, full (to the brim in some cases) with our own stuff. Unfortunately, no grandchildren are quite at the stage to need a lot of furniture, although several pieces are now sitting at our house waiting for our daughter, who is the closest to furnishing more than one room somewhere.
The third blow was learning that sending something to auction, unless it is rare and in perfect condition, doesn't bring much money. The return on the secondhand market is always less than people expect...and right now it is even softer. Being told something you had treasured has no $$ value is not easy to swallow.
So the spring was not easy for any of us-add a 150 mile round trip made at least once a week for both my sister and I, and you can understand why she and I pinky-swore that we would not do to our children what had been done to us! We have both been cleaning out and packing up.
She has always been better at that than I, but I am working on it. Right now the back of the car is half full of items to be donated, and my goal for today is to fill up the rest of it. I had to make room for my grandmother and great grandmother's cut glass, which I have always loved-and instead of sticking things in the basement, I have really tried to cull.
We are about 10-15 years from moving into a house with less work-it is time to start deciding just what I can't live without. The books will be the issue, of course. A conservative estimate would put them at 2000.
We should also find out if there are any items our children might want. Daughter, being the older, is closer to setting up a household-son, being younger and a guy, hasn't really expressed any interest except in wanting his bed to go with him. And then there are the few family pieces-the corner cupboard that was my husband's great-grandfather's, as well as his portrait and his diploma from Elizabethtown College. The small Tiffany table lamp. The school-master's desk. Great-Aunt Bert's crystal. The cut-glass collection. Better start writing stuff down!