Lewis Thomas, in his 1984 work Late Night Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, writes that  it is our nature as human beings to clutter, and we hanker for places set aside, reserved for storage.  We tend to accumulate and outgrow posessions at the same time, and it is an endlessly discomforting mental task to keep sorting out the ones to get rid of. We might, we think,  remember them later and find a use for them, and if they are gone for good, off to the dump, this is a source of nervousness. I think it may be one of the reasons we drum our fingers so much these days.

( Wikipedia tells us that Lewis Thomas (November 25, 1913 – December 3, 1993) was an American physician, poet, etymologist, essayist, administrator, educator, policy advisor, and researcher.)