Why We Buy More Stuff Than We Need

My Front Porch during my massive uncluttering and downsizing in 2008. 
Why did I even own this stuff? But, wait! There's more.  

I was sitting in my friend's 91 year old mother's living room the other evening engaging in some conversation with this delightful woman, older than my own mother would have been at this time. She was telling me she had decided to go through some of the closets, in her way too large a home for one widowed person of her age, to get rid of some "stuff." She pointed to her foot she held up prominently and said, "Ed, how do you like my new shoes?" I commented that they looked nice.

She then explained that she found this and another pair of new shoes, neither of which had ever been worn by her or the person who gave them to the Goodwill Store in town. She bought them, not because she actually needed them (of course, they were her size and fit properly), but because they were only $2.00 per pair. Who could pass up a deal like that. She didn't need the shoes and she wouldn't have bought these particular shoes in a shoe store if she actually needed shoes, but hey, who could afford to pass up a deal like that even if you don't need whatever it is? 
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