Yes, but seriously, the previous gens. hold onto a lot of junk.
Lots of people never do it once in their whole life. There's a world of optimization levels between "randomly doing things" and "min-maxing life". There's a huge-ass chunk of people who never leave the 0-optimization level of randomly doing things.
When you fill your house with it, to the point where you're a hoarder and can't see your floors and walls, that's a health hazard that attracts dirt, rot, and pests.
My father hoarded all manner of stuff in the garage. It took me days of work to clear it out. And yet I basically understood why each thing was saved.
That chunk of metal was used to repair the car when the front quarter panel rusted from salt. That brass got brazed onto that fixture. Those were the washers for the kitchen sinks. That leather chunk repaired his briefcase. That stuff was used to fence in the garden. That stuff was used to stake the tomato plants. He held onto furniture from my room until I was out of grad school and needed it. etc.
We flat out didn't have the money when I was growing up to just buy stuff from a big box store (and they didn't really exist yet). If we didn't have the material, it didn't get fixed.
A lot of children didn't grow up like this. None of the younger generation in my family want any of the furniture. They have the disposable cash from their parents that they can buy something "new". I would have killed at their age for the stuff I now throw out. C'est la vie.