This really hit home:

My grandmother died recently, and as part of the final tidying of her affairs my parents and my aunt and uncle spent a weekend in Okeechobee going through my grandmother’s things, deciding what to keep and what to donate to charity. My dad commented later that it was sad that after a life of accumulating things, the material sum of your life ends up in a few cardboard boxes after you die, more than anything a burden to those left behind who do not share the emotional attachment to your things that the you did. So true—there has to be a better way than this consumerist rat race.