When I was a kid growing up in the USSR, "stuff" was really important to everyone because everything was really hard to get. Those who grew up in the West can't possibly understand how valuable even the most insignificant stuff seemed there. Petty theft was rampant. If you left a load of laundry unattended you could come back and find even your socks missing.

The "stuff" mindset is very difficult for some people to break. Over the first few years living in the US, my mother had accumulated more useless stuff than most people who'd spent their whole lives here. After 15 years in the US, she still worries about leaving her stuff in the laundromat.

I've been thinking about the subject a lot over the years and Paul's essay is spot-on. The more money I make, the more I dislike "stuff". I hardly bought anything since I started my first job after college. In contrast I used to buy a fair amount of junk before. My room was always cluttered and I hated being at home because I felt like the stuff drained all my energy.

It's true that stuff owns people and not the other way around. My neighbor in Cambridge, MA keeps a backyard (more like a junkyard) full of used construction materials and equipment, including 3 dead trucks. He spends every single evening trying to straighten it out, but ends up just wheelbarrowing stuff from place to place without any noticeable progress. I, on the other hand, am now able to spend every evening working on my startup, and not having stuff makes me feel great!