Somewhere in the suburbs of America, baby boomer parents are quietly losing it. They adore their millennial children — don’t get me wrong. They’ve helped them weather recessions, impossible housing markets, student loans, new careers and career resets, late rent, early returns and all else in between. But, there is one thing they’re no longer willing to tolerate: all the stuff their adult children keep depositing in the home.
Millennials have a big storage problem, and rather than confronting it, they’re leaving the mess in their parents’ homes. Childhood trophies. College textbooks. Random IKEA furniture. Clothes they promise themselves they will throw on again. Boxes labeled “misc.” Holiday decorations. Gaming consoles from 2011. Dorm-room appliances. High school yearbooks. The list goes on and boomers are watching it accumulate like some slow-motion invasion.
The funny thing is, millennials don’t think they are hoarders. They believe they’re “saving things for when life stabilizes,” which is millennial speak for “I don’t have the cash, space or emotional bandwidth to be bothered by stuff right this second.” And who can really blame them? Rent is sky-high. Homes are unaffordable. Storage units cost a fortune. So yes — the sane, economical answer is to continue quietly cramming their past into their parents’ unused rooms as they always have, like squirrels with acorns.
But boomers, who were raised in a radically different economic world, are mystified. They decluttered their own parents’ homes 30 years ago. They bought houses earlier. They had garages and attics and basements full of goods they accumulated themselves, then drained themselves. Observing their kids failure to deal with personal possessions instead is like watching an entire generation marooned in transition.
The tension typically begins with an offhand remark. “Do you still want this?” Next, it becomes a silent prompt: “We really should empty out the basement one of these days.” It turns into a plea: “Please come get your things.” And then comes the moment all parents surrender: the threat, “If you don’t take it by the weekend, I’m tossing it.”
Millennials are getting these messages, but they ain’t budging. Not because they are indifferent, rather because their things do stand for more than just mess. They are souvenirs of a childhood that seems impossibly remote. They are pieces of stability at a moment when nothing else — careers, rent prices, the future — feels stable. They serve as reminders of who they once were, before adulthood got messy. And bad ones can sap energy that many millennials don’t have after years of financial stress and delayed milestones.
There’s the emotional strange-making of acknowledging that you do not have room for your own memories. Boomer parents’ walk-in closets. Sending your keepsakes back to the nest means deciding — literally and figuratively — what will stay with you, what won’t, and few people want to make a choice between childhood journals and an air fryer.
Boomers, for their part, are reaching a different point in life. They’re retiring, downsizing and fantasizing about clean, spare homes. They don’t want heaps of their adult children’s stuff haunting their closets. They want room to breathe. They want the freedom to travel, reorganize, repaint or reclaim the basement for a hobby they haven’t pursued in 20 years.
The generational friction is hilarious, but it’s also profoundly revealing. Young people aren’t hoarding stuff because they’re self-centered. They’re overwhelmed. Their adulthood has been nothing like that of their parents. And baby boomers are not being unreasonable. They’re tired. They’ve spent years warehousing, cleaning up after and supporting — and they want their homes back.
Some households find compromises. Millennials share tiny storage units with friends. Boomers collect everything into one huge “take this home” pile during holiday visits. Some parents get creative and begin delivering boxes to their kids’ apartments unannounced. Some give it, and then pretend they saw nothing.
But one thing is certain: the stuff problem of millennials isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Not until housing becomes affordable. Not until incomes feel secure. Certainly not until millennials feel settled enough to transport their possessions into the next chapter of life, rather than to leave them hanging in the last one.
Until then, basements nationwide will be accidental museums of millennial life — curated by boomers who never signed up to be archivists. And every time a parent passes near a pile of dusty boxes bearing the scrawled label “ART PROJECTS ’03,” they’ll mutter the same thing to themselves: “One day, they’re getting rid of this stuff.
