I live in a place he'd probably characterize as poor (my neighbors probably all make less than 20K), and everyone has LOTS of stuff around here, often including the mentioned cars in the front yard. When you buy cheaper stuff, it breaks more often, and it's usually cheaper to buy a new one than fix the old one, but if you're poor, you spent too much of your income on the old one to be comfortable just throwing it away. So the old microwave that doesn't work goes in the closet in case it can be fixed, and you buy a new microwave for less than you paid for the old one two years ago. You keep the broken chair in your living room because eventually you'll have enough money and time to fix and recover it, and then for years tell people not to sit in it when they come in to visit, because "it's just broken right now, but we'll get it fixed".