When you clean out an old toolbox you find a pencil worn down to two inches. Somebody did a lot of measuring with that.

Tools worn down that far are a record of work nobody wrote down. Every one of those inches was somebody measuring something carefully, probably for other people, with no thought that the pencil would be the thing that survived. Most lives leave evidence like this rather than documents: used up objects that say somebody took care.

Look at what the people before you actually left behind, in a drawer or a toolbox, and ask about one item. Then use it rather than keeping it pristine. Wearing it down further is the point of it.