Exactly. One of my grandparents was from Germany, and that family did some "heirloom" furniture retention. But, I never saw this as a cultural trait one way or

Exactly. One of my grandparents was from Germany, and that family did some "heirloom" furniture retention. But, I never saw this as a cultural trait one way or the other. It was very much an economic class thing. My other grandparents were less well off and didn't have as much to pass along, nor the luxury of space to hold onto items that weren't in active use. On the other hand, in recent decades I had a German colleague who was fully into treating furniture like "fast fashion". He loved things like IKEA and changing out whole sets of room furnishings on a whim. He tried to rationalize it as sensible to buy cheaper stuff since it was going to "be discarded anyway", and never really seemed to reflect on the idea that maybe he didn't need to change everything so often!