The Unbearable Lightness of STUFF

Have you ever suddenly looked around and actually noticed all the STUFF surrounding you in your home? I mean, this stuff has been part of the background noise of your life for so long it's like the blue in the sky or the green in the trees; you don't even notice, it all blends in so well.
I'm sitting here at my desk and I'm focusing on individual items that have been part of my life for decades. Why do I still have them? There's this REI candle lantern that I used on my hiking trips in Alaska, which was back in the mid-eighties, and I haven't used it since. A cracked and retired coffee cup that was a Christmas present from my employer at the photo lab I worked at in Anchorage. In the book case next to me are paperback books I bought and read once years ago and probably will never read again. Across the room is another bookcase full of photography books which in this digital age are obsolete at best. Once a year I go on a stuff reduction frenzy in a vain attempt to reduce the clutter and yet this stuff survives. Are these things actually some sort of life form that mentally influence my values system in order to ensure their survival? Something to think about, indeed.
I wonder if this can somehow be blamed on genetics. Before my Mom died, she had become the ultimate pack rat; she simply could not throw ANY thing away. These things I still have I never use and have a hard time picturing ever using again, what causes me to value them so much I allow them to take up space, unused, ignored for the most part till I have to move them around. It does not matter even that some of these things are truly functional, I still find some reason to keep them. This is sad. This is very, very sad.
I think we all suffer from this strange syndrome at one level or another. The rich certainly can't garner enough STUFF, but even us po' folks manage to build our collections of stuff that perhaps makes us feel better for having it all. I'm sure our consumer driven society has made this all but inevitable, for what other purpose does there seem to be in life than to consume and collect STUFF? Perhaps if we could all wean ourselves off this obsession, be it mild or out of control, the entire race, the planet indeed, would be much better off.
Take a look around tonight and see how much STUFF pops out from the background when you actually look and see it all. Scary, isn't it?