Nostalgia is keeping Americans from clearing out their parents' homes

Nearly half of Americans (46%) still use their parents’ place as a personal storage unit — and it’s not just the younger generations.

That’s according to a recent survey of 2,000 people who’ve moved away from home, which found that Americans, young and old, still have things stashed at their parents’ homes or, in many cases, in storage units of their own.

In fact, the average person who still keeps things with their folks has a whopping nine boxes stored on average.

Alongside the 82% of Gen Z and 69% of millennials who still keep some of their belongings at their parents’ home, 46% of Gen X confessed to doing this too.

The study was conducted by Talker Research and commissioned by CubeSmart (https://www.cubesmart.com) to examine the psychology of keeping stuff in storage and how sentimentality plays a big role.

According to the findings, for many, accumulating possessions isn’t about materialism or overconsumption. Nostalgia, remembrance and emotional attachment have a lot to do with it.

In fact, respondents said the top reason they store belongings at their parents’ homes is for preservation and safekeeping (41%).

But no matter their motivations, people have really accumulated a lot of stuff over the years, and they have to keep it somewhere, whether that’s their parents’ houses or their own.

Dr. Augusto Blanco, a licensed clinical psychologist, explained the science behind this sentimentality, saying, “Research shows that sentimental objects can act as cues that help us access important life experiences, maintain a sense of continuity over time and preserve emotional connections to things that matter to us. Letting go of an item can then feel less like discarding a simple physical object and more like risking the loss of part of a personal story.

“Now, the tendency to keep belongings in storage for years is mostly driven by a combination of nostalgia, anticipated regret and uncertainty about the future. People can think, ‘What if I need this someday?’ or ‘What if I regret throwing it away?’ These thoughts create a psychological cost to letting go that can outweigh the practical costs of keeping something. And so, the easiest choice is taken. Storage spaces and parents’ homes can become extensions of our emotional lives, allowing us to postpone difficult decisions about identity, change and loss.”

Even though they’ve had the least time to accumulate things, Gen Z (62%) was the most likely out of all age groups to feel their homes are overflowing with things, followed by millennials (59%). And men were more likely to feel this way than women (55% vs. 48%).

Possibly because of this, over a third of respondents (35%) keep some of their belongings in a storage unit. And on average, people have used their unit for eight years.

Sentimentality is a big player here, too. When asked about the most valuable things they keep in their units, it was clear that people use storage units to hold on to things that have more emotional value than monetary value.

One respondent said, “In my storage unit is a box of old photos and handwritten letters. They’re not worth much money, but they hold memories and moments that can’t ever be replaced, which makes them more valuable than anything else in there.”

Proving this point, when asked about the top reasons they have storage units, respondents once again cited sentimentality (45%) as the chief reason.