Newcomers to North Idaho sometimes are surprised at the level of "stuff" (for lack of a better word) that seems to end up in people’s yards. When we moved here, the directions we’d give people to our house actually included "turn right at the house with the piles of junk in the yard and the ugly dog" since there weren’t any road signs.
Periodically, there is some halfhearted political effort to "clean up" these blighted yards with their ancient cars and snowmobiles decomposing in a field. But what no one ever seems to ask is how do these places get that way in the first place?
I have a theory that yards full of junk are sort of a "junk drawer" that’s gotten out of control. Even in the smallest apartment, people almost always have a "junk drawer" where they put old twisty ties, scissors, batteries, rubber bands and other things that you really don’t know what to do with, but you might need it someday.
Now that we live in a bigger house, we have a woodshop. The shop has an unfortunate tendency to get out of control, much like a junk drawer. We tend to throw shipping boxes, empty pellet bags, and other things into the shop, so if we have to ship something out, we’ll have packing material and boxes. Of course, eventually, we can barely get into the shop, so it’s time for a massive cleaning and dump run.
If you live in a place long enough, it’s possible that the "junk drawer syndrome" could happen to the whole house and yard over the span of years. Eventually the prospect of cleaning it up is just too daunting, so your yard starts to look suspiciously like a landfill itself.
There are scientific theories that space is expanding. Apparently, the junk drawer can continue to expand to whatever space you give it.