8 things lower-middle-class boomers keep 'just in case' that never get used (and never will)

There's a drawer in my partner's kitchen that I've learned not to open carelessly. It's the bag drawer. Hundreds of plastic grocery bags stuffed inside other plastic bags, ready to avalanche out the moment you pull the handle.

"Why keep all these?" I asked once.

"Just in case," she said. Same answer her mom gives. Same answer every boomer I know gives.

Here's the thing about "just in case" thinking: it's not really about the bags. It's about inherited anxiety from parents who lived through the Great Depression. Psychologists call it an "inherited scarcity mindset" and it shows up in predictable ways.

Understanding where this comes from helps. These items pile up not because they're useful, but because throwing them away triggers a deep-seated fear of being caught without. Let's look at what actually ends up in the "just in case" pile.

1. Plastic grocery bags (and bags to hold the bags)

Every boomer home has them. Under the sink, stuffed in pantries, overflowing from cabinets. The infamous "bag of bags" saved for lining trash cans or wrapping leftovers.

Most never get used. They just accumulate.

The behavioral economics here are fascinating. Each bag represents a tiny act of thrift, a micro-insurance policy against future need. Adding one more feels necessary even when you have two hundred.

It's not about the bags. It's about control. When the world feels uncertain, keeping free things feels like preparation.

2. Twist ties and rubber bands (sorted by size)

There's always a jar. Or a drawer section. Twist ties from bread bags, rubber bands from newspapers, all carefully organized like some kind of miniature archive.

I helped someone move last year and found over two hundred twist ties sorted by color in an old coffee tin. Organized by color. Collected over decades.

You might think that's excessive. But consider what it represents.

Scarcity creates behaviors that help manage shortage short-term but create problems long-term. Each tiny item feels too useful to discard. Collectively, they become evidence of careful living, preparation for problems that never arrive.

3. Hotel toiletries (unopened in wrappers)

Miniature shampoos. Tiny soaps. Those shower caps nobody has ever actually used.

Entire drawers get dedicated to these. Collected from hotels over decades, they sit there while full-sized products get used daily.

Why? Because they're "perfectly good" and wasting them feels wrong.

This is Depression-era logic in miniature form. Free things carry value because free once meant survival. Your income doesn't change that instinct. The cognitive pattern stays locked in.

4. Buttons (enough to stock a store)

Cookie tins full of buttons. Buttons from donated shirts, buttons that don't match anything owned, buttons from clothes that wore out years ago.

The rationale never changes: you might need a replacement button someday.

And honestly? That's not wrong. You might. The issue isn't the logic—it's that most buttons never find their way onto a garment.

The psychology here goes deeper than buttons. It's about maintaining the belief that everything can be fixed, that nothing needs wasting, that careful preparation prevents loss. The buttons are just the physical manifestation of that belief system.

5. Instruction manuals (for things they don't own)

Filed in folders, stuffed in drawers. Manuals for VCRs, flip phones, appliances replaced a decade ago.

I've seen three-ring binders organized by category, filled with guides for products long gone. The internet made these obsolete years ago. Any manual you need exists online.

But these aren't kept for practical reasons.

They're kept "for reference"—a just-in-case archive that represents responsibility and preparation. They're proof of being careful, of doing things right, of fulfilling duties as a responsible owner. The manual itself doesn't matter. What it represents does.

6. National Geographic magazines (yellow spines collecting dust)

Stacked in basements, lined up on shelves. Kept because they're "historical documents" despite the entire archive existing online, searchable and free.

The physical magazines aren't about information anymore. They're about permanence. About having something tangible that can't disappear.

And honestly? There's real logic to that fear. Digital things do disappear. Companies fold, formats change, access gets revoked. The paper version feels safer, more real, more controlled.

The tension is that they're not getting read. They take up space that could be used for living. But I get why they're hard to let go.

7. Duplicate kitchen utensils (the backup system)

Three can openers. Four cheese graters. Six wooden spoons when you only use one.

The logic seems sound: if one breaks, you have a backup. If that breaks, another backup. Practical. Forward-thinking.

Except modern things don't break that way. And if they do, you can replace them same-day.

The drawers fill up with duplicate tools, each representing a hedge against future need. But that future doesn't arrive, and finding the tool you actually want becomes harder.

8. Old photographs (boxes that never get opened)

This one hits different.

Photographs are memories. Proof that life happened. Losing them means losing something you can't get back.

The boxes multiply because nobody knows what to do with them. Digitizing feels overwhelming. Throwing them away feels impossible. So they stay in closets and attics, never looked at but never discarded.

My grandmother has thousands. Photos of people I've never met, places I've never been. They carry weight. They deserve better than a dusty box, but nobody has the bandwidth to deal with them.

The fear here isn't about waste. It's about disappearance. About what happens when all evidence of a life slips away.

The bottom line

The items themselves? Not a big deal. Rubber bands and hotel soaps aren't hurting anyone.

But they tell a story about inherited fear. About what happens when your teachers grew up in a time when being careful literally meant survival.

The Depression ended. The war ended. Real scarcity, for most Americans, ended decades ago.

But the psychological patterns didn't. They got passed down like family recipes, except instead of cooking techniques, it's a belief system: things might run out, you need to be prepared, throwing away anything useful is wasteful.

Here in Venice Beach, I see the opposite approach. Minimalists who keep almost nothing. It works for them, and the boomer approach works for boomers. Different strategies for managing the same anxiety about having enough.

The point isn't to judge either direction. It's just helpful to understand where these patterns come from. You don't have to change your relationship with stuff.

But knowing the psychology behind it? That makes the whole thing make a lot more sense.