It's rather interesting and jarring to me to see how many of the reply's in this thread are so aggressively defensive of the very idea that owning more stuff might not always be better than not owning more stuff.
I've been watching a marathon of back episodes of "Hoarders" (http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/index.jsp) on NetFlix streaming, and it's somewhat startling to me how much some of the replies here sound like the defensive responses of some of the hoarders in the show.
I think that these threads always end up being more about ideology than hard facts. There are a lot of people that enjoy not being 'tied down' and being 'free and easy,' which things like 'having kids' or 'owning a house' tend to prevent. It then becomes more of a decision to pursue a particular lifestyle than anything else.
That said, the reaction of the people on Hoarders tend to be defensive reactions due to not wanting to deal with the issue at hand (i.e. extreme procrastination). Which is probably why most of them pick up their hoarding habits after the loss of a close loved one (usually a parent). They don't want to deal with the loss, so they are constantly pushing it away, and not dealing with it.
{edit} This tends to bleeding into everything else in their lives. They live for the momentary thrill of acquiring things, while not bothering with 'the boring stuff' like cleaning their house, or sorting their acquired items, or even deciding which items are/aren't worthless.
These articles go to an extreme; just because I don't want to rent everything I've got, doesn't mean I am a stuff-o-holic. I have a very hefty anchor back home- a ~50lb toolbox. By the wisdom of HN articles, that should be the first thing out my door, but it enables me to maintain my motorcycles. Why do I maintain my own motorcycles? Because an oil change costs $20 and 20 minutes when I do it, but $100 and an hour or three when the dealer does it.
I've been watching a marathon of back episodes of "Hoarders" (http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/index.jsp) on NetFlix streaming, and it's somewhat startling to me how much some of the replies here sound like the defensive responses of some of the hoarders in the show.