The top opens and you can use it for storage. I take stuff that I haven't used lately, and put it into the tables. Then
I wait a year. If the table has been unopened for the year, then I don't need what's in there, and I get rid of it.
I've heard of that technique. I actually have it happening in an informal way all over my house -- plastic bins in closets and under beds, a filing cabinet, basement storage spaces filled with stuff ... A lot of it is in the form of memorabilia from my kids' childhoods or things inherited from my grandmother (table cloths, dishes, etc. -- I did, as I said, sell the silver). The only thing I use regularly are Christmas and Halloween decorations.
I did, however, pare half a closet full of photos down to four shoe-box size boxes -- except they're cute colorful ones purchased from Amazon -- and a couple of larger colorful ones, also from Amazon, for 8X11s and other bigger things. It meant going through each photo one at a time, sorting them very roughly by when they were taken, setting aside duplicates, etc. So that was a major accomplishment!
The rough time-period categories are: before kids, when the kids were babies, and when the kids were in elementary school. Then they abruptly cut off. Bet you can figure out why.