I cannot help but burst into laughter over the phone while speaking with Steve Johnson, a seventy‑two‑year‑old retiree navigating the cluttered depths of his basement in suburban Atlanta. As he splashes carefully through boxes and piles of possessions, he paints a vivid verbal picture of the chaos left behind by his four fully grown children. The items he lists form a time capsule of decades past: a stack of vintage vinyl records, a collection of Atlanta Braves bobble‑heads gathering dust, faded Pink Floyd posters curling at the edges, musical paraphernalia like a solitary drum and unused guitar stands, rows of well‑thumbed paperbacks, and a veritable mountain of compact discs long since displaced by streaming. Midway through the excavation, Johnson discovers a photograph featuring Bob Marley and exclaims with amused disbelief, invoking the Almighty several times in various shades of awe, irritation, and nostalgia. Each discovery invites its own exclamation — his daughter’s once‑bouncy exercise ball earns an audible groan, while remnants of camping equipment from the children’s festival‑going days elicit another “Oh my God.” When an old violin, symbol of a short‑lived middle‑school musical venture, surfaces, he mutters an almost apologetic “Ope.” Between chuckles, Johnson quips, “Sorry as I walk through memory lane here,” fully aware that each object resurrects a fragment of the family’s history.
Recently retired and endeavoring to impose order on his household, Johnson has requested that his adult offspring decide what they wish to do with this accumulated detritus. So far, the response has been tepid at best. “From what I can tell, they simply don’t care anymore — and honestly, that’s fine,” he admits with a mix of resignation and humor. Yet shedding these possessions proves surprisingly difficult; charitable organizations such as Goodwill, along with many secondhand stores, are selective about donations and accept only certain items. During a home remodel, Johnson resorted to renting a dumpster to dispose of some things, though even then his conscience pricked at the wastefulness. “I feel bad about that — just trashing stuff,” he sighs, weariness in his tone as his wandering eyes catch sight of a pink yard flamingo his wife likely still wants to keep.
The conversation surrounding the so‑called “avalanche of boomer belongings” has become ubiquitous, and even I have contributed to the discourse. Yet it would be unfair to place the burden of clutter solely on baby boomers. The tendency to hoard the obsolete or the sentimental transcends generations. Increasingly, members of Generation X, millennials, and even emerging Gen Z adults treat their parents’ homes as convenient extensions of personal storage — de facto warehouses preserving relics of their younger days. These are not, by and large, failed launches into adulthood; rather, they are incomplete takeoffs in which the metaphorical rocketships remain half‑loaded. The result is that parents find themselves surrounded by their children’s memorabilia: stacks of yearbooks, formal dresses from bygone proms, and trophies once gleaming at Little League banquets.
Many of these “storage tenants” have fully established families, careers, and independent lives, yet the task of confronting their stored possessions remains perpetually deferred. Sorting through old comic‑book collections, outdated class notes, or forgotten souvenirs demands both time and emotional energy they rarely have to spare. Young adults who have not yet secured permanent housing — or who occupy smaller, high‑cost apartments — continue to postpone retrieval, entertaining the illusion that one day they will have the space or purpose for it all. That airborne “someday” grows increasingly distant, threatening to arrive only when they themselves hold AARP cards. Their parents, by contrast, can sense time’s urgency pressing against them.
Part of adulthood, however, is accepting uncomfortable accountability. So long as those boxes remain in a parent’s basement or attic, one can pretend that their contents are not one’s problem — but that denial eventually crumbles. Moving out rarely means moving on entirely. No one packs childhood dolls or varsity jackets for freshman year at college, and few early apartments can accommodate the volumes of possessions amassed in a family home. Leaving those mementos behind can feel both reasonable and emotionally convenient. Simultaneously, parents often prefer it that way. Retaining their children’s belongings softens the echo of an empty nest, offering tangible continuity with a past chapter of family life. In other cases, parents are simply squeamish about discarding their children’s former treasures.
The outcome is a quiet stalemate: parents reluctant to sever ties, and children content to delay responsibility. As professional organizer Mindy Godding of Abundance Organizing in Virginia observes, many parents hesitate to act because they feel it is not their place to decide what stays or goes. Meanwhile, adult children avoid confrontation altogether. “They just don’t want to deal with it,” Godding explains. The pattern repeats itself endlessly — not a failure to launch, but a failure to finish loading the metaphorical spacecraft toward independence.
Take Alex Kovalenko, a forty‑four‑year‑old husband and father living outside Toronto. For nearly a decade, he has stored boxes of old belongings in his father’s work warehouse half an hour away. Between child‑rearing, full‑time jobs, and everyday obligations, he and his wife lack both time and motivation to sift through the clutter. Kovalenko acknowledges that the situation unfairly consumes space his father could use for work, yet practicality triumphs over guilt. Any attempt to sort through or sell the contents would require weeks he cannot afford to spare. His wife’s suggestion to dedicate part of their vacation to the task feels almost absurd — surrendering rare leisure time to deal with dusty boxes of forgotten goods.
Kristina Markos, forty‑one, finds herself in a similar predicament. After relocating from Chicago to Boston in 2013, she and her husband left boxes tucked away above her in‑laws’ garage. Since the older couple has no immediate plans to downsize, the arrangement remains a mutually convenient state of inertia. Markos even entertains the idea that, should they eventually move, she will make a special trip and rent a U‑Haul to retrieve everything. In the meantime, the problem, as she puts it, “isn’t hurting anyone.” Optimistically, she imagines her Generation Alpha children might one day inherit and reuse some of the stored odds and ends — curtain rods, bedding, and tools — framing the practice as an act of sustainability and thrift. Her father‑in‑law recently mailed her son an old trumpet, a gesture that underscores her belief that recycling family possessions benefits everyone involved. Still, one can’t help wondering how those long‑stored household items will weather the years, or whether the next generation will even want them at all.
For others, the barriers are not logistical but emotional. Disposing of personal relics often awakens grief and guilt. Ripley Neff, thirty‑one, understands this tender dynamic intimately. After losing her grandmother in 2022 and her mother two years later, she found herself sorting through decades of mementos — photos, letters, and keepsakes layered thick with memory. Perhaps that is why she hesitates to touch the boxes left in the bedroom she once called her own at her surviving grandmother’s house. Though recently a homeowner in Memphis, she cannot yet confront the act of clearing them out. Her husband urges her to “get ahead of it,” but she wrestles with an identity tug‑of‑war — no longer the child, yet still feeling like one in her family’s eyes.
Such stories abound and feel universally familiar. A friend sheepishly admits to keeping her school notes from more than twenty years ago, though she recently rediscovered joy in rereading them with her parents. Another acquaintance describes his family’s new rule: each adult child must trim their stored possessions down to two boxes. Others fear entrusting shipment of their belongings after a prior misadventure in which irreplaceable treasures vanished in transit. I confess my own complicity — last Christmas, my mother unearthed a box of Barbies I had utterly forgotten. Instead of giving permission to sell them online, I professed an intention to “take care of it myself.” Predictably, I did not.
What we see, as organizers like Godding observe, is that parents often attach far more sentiment to these remnants than their children do, sometimes projecting nostalgia the younger generation no longer shares. The clutter, after all, extends beyond mere boxes or dolls. It symbolizes the emotional gravity of material things — the way objects come to embody aspirational selves and abandoned possibilities. Discarding old lecture notes may feel like renouncing deferred academic ambitions; giving away the basement drum kit can signify releasing dormant rock‑and‑roll dreams. Meanwhile, parents, seeing the keepsakes of their children’s lives, cannot help but preserve them as tangible expressions of love and shared history.
Godding recalls assisting a mother who had maintained her children’s bedrooms in pristine nineties condition. When the mother consulted her grown children, her son insisted on personally sorting his room before she touched anything, whereas her daughter casually permitted a clean sweep. The mother immediately doubted her daughter’s detachment and resolved to store everything “just in case.” In such exchanges, sentimentality becomes circular — parents holding onto memories they imagine their children will later regret losing.
Ultimately, though, these emotional standoffs cannot last forever. Mortality gives decluttering a hard deadline. No one, not even the most devoted nostalgic, truly wishes to leave behind an attic packed with My Little Ponies and Hot Wheels for future generations to manage. These lingering objects become symbols of unspoken negotiations between parents and children — each side walking a fine line between preservation and liberation.
Nicholas Budler’s story illustrates how resolution can be achieved. Pressed by an uncle to clear out university leftovers, the twenty‑nine‑year‑old curated a small “keep” collection worthy of adult life — his degrees, a cherished baseball caught in youth, and a few meaningful travel trinkets. Everything else — old clothes, outdated décor, tangled cords — he discarded. The crucial differentiator, he explains, is envisioning whether any given item genuinely belongs in one’s present adult space or merely lingers out of habit. If a keepsake is destined to migrate endlessly from junk drawer to junk drawer, it isn’t worth keeping. Yet even Budler feels lingering regret over the many books he gave away, now slowly rebuilding his library title by title.
Generationally speaking, not all cohorts approach this dilemma equally. Godding notes that Gen X, the so‑called “latchkey” generation, tends to exhibit more independence and practical detachment, whereas millennials often struggle more acutely with parental‑storage dependency. It was, in fact, the self‑effacing email from Steve Johnson — the Atlanta retiree and boomer patriarch — that prompted this entire exploration. Having read my previous reporting on the looming “boomer stuff‑pocalypse,” he wrote plaintively, “What’s a boomer to do with their kids’ stuff???” Determined to find an answer, I turned to the experts.
Tonya Kubo, formerly of Clutter Free Academy, advises older parents to hold a frank internal dialogue about their motives. Are they keeping their children’s things because these items spark joy and connection — or merely out of obligation and fear of causing offense? If the latter, she argues, responsibility must revert firmly to the adult children. “They will eventually inherit that responsibility, if not now then inevitably after you’re gone,” she cautions. She recalls counseling a woman hoarding three motorcycles belonging to her forty‑year‑old son while simultaneously paying for two storage units for her own possessions. The simple act of asking her son to remove the vehicles led to their prompt sale within two weeks.
For the children, the moral is equally clear: if they can comfortably live without an object today, it likely holds less value than nostalgia pretends. Kubo counsels introspection — asking whether an item will authentically belong in a future life or if it represents an obsolete version of oneself. Godding, meanwhile, suggests practical strategies like sending photographs of uncertain items to adult kids, prompting efficient decision‑making and preventing storytelling from overshadowing clarity.
Both experts agree that America’s problem extends beyond individual families. “Every generation in this country suffers a consumption problem,” Godding observes. “We are hardwired to buy anew, not to reuse.” Setting firm boundaries — or at least realistic goals — becomes essential. Parents can encourage children to dedicate a portion of visits to trimming their stash, while seriously questioning whether renting a storage unit is anything but a postponement of the inevitable. Donations through local charities, community exchange groups, or Buy Nothing networks often provide more meaningful avenues for re‑homing items than perpetuating cycles of acquisition.
Still, the consumer conveyor belt hums on, and possessions accumulate faster than they disperse. One can easily imagine the cycle repeating across generations: Gen Xers, millennials, and zoomers eventually confronting basements of their own overflowing with relics from both themselves and their forebears. Consider Jon Spike, thirty‑seven, from Wisconsin, who experienced the cycle’s renewal firsthand. Merely a month after he and his wife purchased their home, his mother arrived bearing boxes filled with artifacts from his childhood. Now, they occupy his basement — quietly waiting for the next reckoning, another turn of the generational wheel. Thus, the saga of stuff continues, endlessly recycling through time, sentiment, and the stubborn human attachment to the tangible past.
Emily Stewart, senior correspondent at Business Insider, explores the intersections of business, economy, and cultural trends through nuanced analysis and reporting. Her ongoing work for the publication’s Discourse series seeks to illuminate the subtle ways our material habits reflect larger societal transformations.
Sourse: https://www.businessinsider.com/millennials-junk-clutter-baby-boomer-parents-family-storage-2025-12
