I'm sure I've probably told this story before, but I used to live in a condo that had a 1 car garage. There were four condos to a cluster, and our parking lot had two clusters, so our little lot had 8 garages. Out of those 8 garages, only two people actually used them for cars. One of them was me, who kept an antique car in there, and one was my neighbor who kept his Camry Solara in there. He was a bad driver, and had some kind of disability on top of that, and was constantly scraping the side of the door opening. Everyone else used those garages for storage. Now one guy did keep a small pop-up camping trailer in his garage, but he also had junk piled up behind and on top of it.
As for younger generations and hoarding, I wonder if it's a trait they will acquire, as they get older? When I was in my 20s, for example, the only possessions I really had, were what was in my bedroom. But when I bought my condo, suddenly I managed to expand to fill 1254 square feet. Although, I guess I should confess, I packed a bunch of stuff in boxes, mostly old school books and such, up in Grandmom's attic. Only problem is, I put them up there when I was in my 20's, so I used larger boxes, and packed them pretty heavy...the type of stuff you don't think about when you're a young'un.
Well, we finally cleaned the attic out earlier this year, in anticipation of finally getting the house ready to sell, and I learned that the stuff you can lift when you're in your 50s, is not quite the same as when you were in your 20s! Plus, I was up there, balanced on top of a ladder, half way up in the access panel, and trying to hand these boxes down to my Mom and my uncle...both in their 70's now and neither in the best of health.
And, the majority of that stuff that was packed up there? Went right to the dump! One of the items up there was an artificial Christmas tree that my Mom bought us from Montgomery Ward back in 1981, for around $20. As a kid, I loved that thing, but looking at it now, in my 50's, I was like good LORD this thing is tacky!
But then, I also found something up there that I thought got tossed years ago. Another Christmas tree, this one from the 50's, I think. It was one of those silver/aluminum trees, the type you weren't supposed to hang lights on, although we still did. It originally came with some sort of color wheel/slide projector type thing that you would aim at the tree, to cast a light on it, that would cycle through a few colors. Haven't run across that projector yet, but a major wave of nostalgia came over me when I found the tree itself! Probably worthless to most people, or at best, only a few bucks, but the sentiment was strong enough, that I held onto it. So now, it's in the box, up in the attic of my garage at the new house. And there it will probably stay, until someone does a trash-out of the place after I'm dead!
Oh, on the subject of wasting money, how's this one? My new house has a small garage that's more like a workshop/tractor shed, with a carport attached to it. The total slab is probably 20x28 feet. It needs work. My uncle wanted to build a second level on to it. Nevermind the fact that I recently had a 36x60 garage built, and it has a loft that's 15x60, and I've done a pretty good job of not junking it up too bad, yet.
I asked him what he wanted to store up in this proposed second level, and he mentioned some of the old furniture and such at Grandmom's house. I tried to stress to him that the cost to build that second level would be far more expensive than the value of anything he wanted to store up there. From a logical standpoint, I think he understands that. Alas, logic doesn't always win out. Another one of his harebrained ideas was to buy one of those cargo containers and set it up as a storage/workshop type of thing. When I told him those are usually beat up and need a lot of work to customize, he said he would do it. I was like dude, it takes an act of Congress, practically, to get you to bring the trash bins back from the street; you really think you're going to have the ambition to take on something like that?
As for dining room tables, I do have my Mom's old table. I think it was made in 1969, so it's not really THAT old. I can remember her buying it from some neighbors of my cousins in mid 1970s. The table is pretty sturdy, but the chairs were kind of spindly and kept pulling apart. I finally took them to the dump a year or so ago. Mom still has the china cabinet that went with the set down at her place. For the longest time, I kept asking her to hang onto the china cabinet, and let me have it if she ever wanted to get rid of it, so I could keep the set together. But, in more recent years, I've come to the conclusion that I just don't care anymore. Part of it is the realization that stuff like that just doesn't have much, if any value any more, so there's no real need to keep the set together. But, I'll also never use it. Sure, I could use it for storage, but there are shelves and other types of furniture better used for storage. And having the means for storage usually just invites you to hoard more.
The dining room table, at least, gets used. It stays out in the sunroom, and we use it for whenever we have cookouts and such. It makes a great spot to spread the food out, buffet style.