Near December of 2011 I sold a banjo on ebay. It made me very sad to do so, but it was rather large and worth some dollars and I knew I would be moving again in a few months. It was purchased by a woman in an area of New Jersey I am familiar with who intended to give it to her son for Christmas, which is lovely, and we talked a little on ebay about her home and life and plans for the banjo. A few months later I was so sad about the banjo and I wished that I had kept in touch so that I could hear how her son was progressing with it; I want to know it's in better hands than mine.
As I was preparing to move to Texas in late 2012 I sold several more items, but this time I documented the ebay pages and kept track of the folks I sent things to, and the dates on which I mailed them. On those same dates, one year later, I wrote and mailed letters to the folks who bought my things, in the hopes that any of them will be more charmed than creeped out and send me a picture or a recording or a brief description of how that item has integrated into their life.
Everything you own was new to you once. And everything you own has a story that probably starts before you, includes a dialogue with you, and will probably end somewhere else. Most days you don't think about any individual item's narrative. But that's what I'm hoping for.
I'm still working on digitizing this documentation, but I will update as I go.