I think that you have hit upon something that is very KEY to this issue, @Sandy Wood . And that is what you just wrote about the woman in the picture that was posted earlier, as well as the lady you were trying to help get her house clean in Florda. There, most of the stuff being stored/kept in the house was trash, and they knew it was trash, but just did not take it out. I think that most of the people from earlier generations saved things, but they did it because they knew there would be a good chance that they would need it in hard times, or that someone else might need it. It was a USABLE item, at least at the time that they made the decision to save it. The picture of the woman in the kitchen with all of the filth is obviously not trying to save something for any hard time in the future. She is just living a sloppy life style and not cleaning things. There is a huge (YUUGE ?) difference between the two mentalities. My folks kept a clean house, they just knew that they had lived through very hard times and gone without, and wanted to be prepared if it happened again. The woman in the picture was not even thinking about tomorrow, nor was she taking care of herself for today.