and I stumbled upon this essay by Paul Graham. I think it pretty well captures my view of stuff, but of course he says it better than I could. Two main points:

1. Having lots of stuff is not very good!

subpoint 1a. Stuff is not valuable.

subpoint 1b. Stuff in fact has negative value because then you have to think about it a lot.

2. Point #1 is not some grand truth.

Stuff these days is like dirt used to be. You kinda need some stuff (to build a mud hut or something) but if you have too much it’s kind of bad. But if you’re all “I don’t like to have a lot of dirt”, it’s not some revolutionary idea and you’re not automatically an enlightened hero. It’s just true, and then you get on with your life.