Bukkit

An option for the chest and items contained within it to be deleted after a certain period of time and on server reboots.

This would just keep the world free from unneeded entities and chests.

Also delete chests if empty.

And don't allow the chest to drop.

Config options example:

    Chest Deletion: 300           #Amount of seconds before deathchests are removed
    Chest Drop: false           #Does the actual chest drop when hit true/false
    Chest Empty: false           #Does an empty chest get auto-removed  true/false

I realize that you posted this a long time ago, but I'm adding it now. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm adding the Chest Deletion option and am going to default the second two to what I believe everyone would choose. The chest won't get dropped with the items when destroyed, and when a player closes a chest with nothing inside it will get destroyed.