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Maybe the total "stuff" burden should be calculated as:

amount of stuff owned * amount you care about it

Owning a small number of things you fetishise seems not so different than having a pile of crap that you don't care about at all.

The "owning less stuff" movement seems to have a lot more traction where rents are high and space is constrained. It seems to me that people tend to produce moral justifications for what are simply practical constraints.

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For me it's about lessening the mental taxation that often comes with the added responsibility of owning things. Mostly from giving you more choices and more things to tend to or care about (even if subconscious). Having to decide what to wear, what to eat for dinner or what to buy at the grocery store might seem like trivial things, but when all of these small things are compounded they end up consuming a large part of your mental energy. Owning less things is just one effort to free up that mental energy to be able to use it elsewhere.

Edit: wording

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