What shall we do with all that stuff?

We all know you can’t take it with you. But what ever happened to the supposedly innate desire to hang on to our possessions?

Many baby boomers no doubt would like to follow the example of King Tut. If at all possible, after expiring they would like to be placed in an elegant tomb inside a pyramid (or a suitably large rented storage facility) with all their earthly possessions, pets and a meal or two to tide them over on their trip to the afterlife.

Barring that, they would like to leave all their essential stuff to their children, thus earning the eternal love and gratitude of their progeny. Their children, in turn, would pass the inherited stuff – along with the stuff they, themselves, have accumulated – down to their own children.

That’s the way it is supposed to work, an unbroken chain of accumulation and distribution. So, why are millennials so dead set on becoming the broken link?

Members of the age group born between 1980 and 2000, according to recent surveys, not only don’t want their parents’ stuff, they don’t even want their own stuff. They seem content to go about their lives largely unencumbered.

Instead of lying in state in a pyramid full of cool stuff, they probably would prefer checking out in a T-shirt, jeans, flip-flops and maybe their smart phones.

This poses a dilemma for their parents. What are the boomers going to do with all their china, silverware, heavy brown furniture, books, artwork, family photos, lawnmowers and weed eaters, pots and pans, reclining chairs and sprawling collections of very interesting things?

But wait, it gets worse. Many baby boomer parents also have been the diligent curators of the archives of their children’s youth.

They have closets, attics, basements, garages, storerooms and spare bedrooms full of boxes and other containers stuffed with memorabilia from their children’s earliest moments on, up until they left home to be on their own.

These parents have dutifully preserved and protected their children’s first crude drawings, their baby shoes and clothes, their first attempts at writing, their early Valentines and birthday cards, their ribbons and trophies from childhood sporting events, their awards and commendations from school, their badges and patches from Scouts, their letters home from camp, their baseball cards and comic books (these parents aren’t going to make the same mistake their parents made!), their favorite toys, stuffed animals and dolls, their posters, their report cards, their souvenirs from field trips, their collections of action figures, their yearbooks, their bicycles (the grandkids might want those!) and their now-fading photo albums.

And the millennials don’t want any of it.

Parents embrace the illusion that someday their children will change their minds. Someday, overcome with ennui and nostalgia, the streamlined millennials will get an urge to comb through the stuff of their childhood, taking the express train on a trip back in time, lovingly fingering the long forgotten items that bring happy memories flooding back.

“See,” their parents will finally, triumphantly be able to declare, “aren’t you glad we saved your precious stuff!”

The more likely story is that parents save these remnants of their children’s youth so they, not their kids, can punch a ticket on that trip back in time. Who really re-reads those letters from camp? We thought so.

Marcel Proust’s memory of things past was jogged by a madeleine. But these days the prompt is more likely to be a Luke Skywalker figure or a Little Mermaid T-shirt. Just junk, really.

It’s sad in a way. Grandmother’s old hair brush used to bring back memories of her. Bundles of old love letters could be found in many a dresser drawer. Dad’s favorite mug is still somewhere in the cupboard.

Never mind, send it all to the landfill. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Maybe the millennials have it right. Travel light, there’s less to carry.

This story was originally published April 2, 2015 at 6:18 PM with the headline "What shall we do with all that stuff?."