The familiar chair may offer support that a newer, prettier one does not.

Comfort is specific to a body, and bodies take no interest in how things look. A chair worn into the exact shape of a back can hold someone for an hour when a beautiful new one cannot manage twenty minutes, and that gap matters enormously to anyone in pain or short of strength. Replacing the old thing is easy to justify on every ground except the one that counts. What would be thrown out is not shabbiness, it is fit.

Before replacing something someone relies on, ask what it does for them that you cannot see. Keep the old one until the new one has proved itself.