I forgot about the paywall. These are the paragraphs that made sense to me;
"So why does the boomer junk divide exist in the first place? The crux of it is that space used to be cheap and stuff expensive; now space is expensive and stuff is cheap. In the 1970s, the average house was about £9,300, roughly four times the average annual salary. Today, the average property is around £272,000, with earnings only increasing to £39,900 – a disastrous ratio for home ownership.
Younger generations can only afford to buy postage stamp flats or, increasingly, to rent a room. What’s precious to them is square footage, not things. Status is marked not by the objects you own but by the great airy wafts of space between them: think of those pale grey minimalist palaces beloved of influencers like Molly-Mae Hague or Kim Kardashian.
Meanwhile the value of ‘stuff’ has fallen like a stone thanks to the easy availability of cheap homeware. I have a houseproud 30-something friend who, every three months, changes the ‘accent colours’ in her home to mark the current season, replacing rugs, curtains, pictures, even hand towels (we are currently moving to plums and reds for winter). She simply hoovers up bargains from Temu and Primark for a steal.
This disposable attitude would be unthinkable to older generations, whose parents lived through the Depression and the war years, when nothing could be wasted. They made do and mended because they had to – and the habit became ingrained. Reading the memoirs of my late grandfather (who lived from 1912-2006) I am struck by the attention he paid to pieces of furniture, writing extensively about inanimate objects: ‘In 1939, I bought for three pounds a small chiffonier to serve as a sideboard in which to keep our cutlery; when we moved in 1989 it realised £800 at sale.’ The furniture is given more airtime than some family members"