Our Obsession with Stuff - But not to the level of the cable TV show "Hoarding"

We seem to spend our entire lives getting stuff, storing stuff, giving old stuff to the Good Will, organizing stuff, and passing stuff along to our children and just dealing with stuff.

We are pack rats and when you hear the term pack rats we probably learned to be pack rats from small furry animals. We are so into our stuff that I want to scream, it seems to go on and on. We even have storage areas we can rent to help us keep our stuff. People will put stuff away for years in storage and can’t remember what kind of stuff they have.

Some people are very obsessed by their stuff, but even the “normal” people get hung up on stuff. My Sister has a rule about stuff, it you haven't used it in a year get rid of it. It's a good rule, but most people can’t fight thousands of years of needing stuff to survive.

My theory on stuff comes from our early days of having nothing. Without our stuff like animal skins, stone axes, stone knives and such, we would not survive. I think it's really a survival instinct that goes way back in our subconscious and our early days as cavemen and cavewomen.

Today we can survive without a lot of stuff but we can’t change our subconscious impulses to collect it.

We are all still into our stuff. But most of us fall short of the current cable TV shows about hoarding, which I find just fascinating.

The Kitchen Table Anthropologist