My Momma still has her mini chest from 1957.  I used to love to play with it and couldn't wait for mine!  I was one of the only senior girls to go and get mine in '76!  It hold special things and sits in my bookcase with my Rex Stout books.

I also have the big Lane cedar chest that Momma got AFTER she and my Daddy married.  The top tray has broken so it is hard to open.  As a matter of fact, I haven't been in it for a while.  I may have to make that one of my projects for the summer.

re-tired  

I have a chest (not cedar, though) that was my dad's. My grandmother, newly divorced and struggling to feed 4 kids, bought them for her sons. My dad gave me his and I use it in my daughter's room. It has sentimental value but not very good quality...

I'm a big fan of "hope chests". I plan to get one (cedar) for my daughter when she's a little older and each year get her something nice to put in it.... then, in her later teen years, I'll start putting more effort into adding home things for when she gets married. Then, I'd like to do one for my son too with tools and things in it.

Here is a page on one of my favorite websites that talks about hope chests....

http://www.achristianhome.org/HopeChest.htm

Have a blessed day,

Julie

 

I'm looking at my hope chest right now. I got it for Christmas my freshman year in high school. My dad had it made for me. I was a strange teenager who asked for china and silverware for Christmas and birthdays and I stored them in my cedar chest. Now it holds extra linens. I'd like to get one for DD when she's older, but I don't know where I'd put it. My mom has two cedar chests: one was her grandmothers and one was my grandmothers that she bought later in life to store out of season clothing and it's a Lane.

Hi

That's funny. I graduated in the 80s and they were still doing that here in NJ !!!!! Great marketing for a great product.

 My parents did a lot of furniture restoration when I was growing up, and Dad refinished old trunks for both my sister and I (not cedar, but beautiful.) When my husband's grandmother died, he got the trunk that had come across with the family from Ireland, and he refinished that. 

 

They're hugely useful. 

 

While my family didn't have a "hope chest" tradition (my family is full of working women going back generations, so they figured if you wanted to get married, you would, but it wasn't a big deal either way) they DID have a "save things for the kids' first apartment" thing going on.    My last couple of years of college, my folks hit yard sales and so on and so when I moved out I had basic furniture, pots, pans, and some plastic containers, and silverware.  

I've seen some great cedar chest deals at used furniture stores-10-20  and a few deals at small-town auctions, but these often get overbid.  An old chest is not difficult to redo with some Ace liquid refinisher and a good satin finish varnish (orange shellac is often used on natural cedar).

If you don't like the yellow poplar veneer used on 1930's cedar chests, stain it cherry.  Looks just like the real thing. 

 

KateHC:

 My parents did a lot of furniture restoration when I was growing up, and Dad refinished old trunks for both my sister and I (not cedar, but beautiful.) When my husband's grandmother died, he got the trunk that had come across with the family from Ireland, and he refinished that. 

 

They're hugely useful. 

 

 

My DFIL refinished DH's grandfathers trunk that he brought when he immigrated from Norway. We use it for storing blankets, pillows and as a side table. Boy, if those trunks could talk.

I have the same little box received in the 1960's after HS graduation.  I also received mine from a local furniture store which was located in New Orleans.  It was stored on a shelf above the Katrina flood waters so it did not get destroyed.  After loosing so much to the devastation caused by Katrina it was a joy to have a cherished memory that survived.

Mollie

 There must be thousands of those little cedar chests around.  Wonder why they stopped making them.  Edey

I see them at yard sales all the time .

I usually buy them .. I given them to almost all the females in the family  my DH has three to clean up and repair for new grands.