The Hidden Psychology of Stuff.

Host: Welcome to The Wisdom Transfer, where experience speaks to the future. Today we’ll be exploring the emotional psychology of possessions, sustainable living, purpose-driven business and why what we choose to keep or let go of can shape the lives we build.

My guest today is Cameron Ungar, founder of Trash & Stash, America’s first B Corp-certified junk removal company. Cameron, it’s an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

Cameron Ungar: Thanks so much. I’m really excited to have this conversation.

Host: Before we get into the main conversation, can you tell us a little about yourself?

Cameron: I own Trash & Stash Junk Removal. We’re based in the Charlotte area, actually on the South Carolina side of the border, but we work on both sides.

We help people get rid of stuff.

It’s not the path I thought I would find myself on. Owning a junk removal company in Charlotte, North Carolina, was definitely not on the bingo card of life.

My background was in the events business. I had expertise in customer service, guest services and operations.

Then we experienced a global pandemic.

When you’re in the business of helping the public assemble and suddenly the public can no longer assemble, you have to figure out something else.

Trash & Stash was that something else.

Host: You’ve seen thousands of homes and businesses during cleanouts. What have those experiences taught you about the emotional relationship people have with their possessions?

Cameron: The biggest surprise I had getting into this business was how emotionally heavy the work is.

When I first started, I expected it to be fairly transactional.

People have a problem. We help solve it.

Let’s simplify people’s lives. Let’s get rid of some of the noise that all this stuff creates.

What I found instead was that it’s a very personal process.

It’s a very emotional process.

We’re often in people’s homes during moments of transition.

Maybe they’re moving a parent into assisted living. Somebody has passed away. There’s been a divorce. The kids have left home.

Or it can be on the other side of the spectrum: a new child is coming into the family, or two families are blending together.

We’re seeing people in these moments of transition, and the stuff can create an enormous amount of friction.

It becomes a physical barrier standing between where they are and where they’re trying to go next.

Cameron: One example I use is a china hutch.

Maybe your mother has had this china hutch for 40 years.

She loves it.

You don’t particularly like it. You don’t have room for it. Your siblings don’t want it.

Now your mother is moving into assisted living or has passed away, and somebody has to decide what happens to this thing.

From the outside, it’s just a piece of furniture.

But that’s not necessarily what it represents to you.

You may not want the china hutch, but you know your mother valued it.

So the idea of throwing it into a landfill feels wrong.

If we can find another person who’s going to appreciate that piece of furniture the way your mother did, suddenly the decision can become easier.

You’re not necessarily preserving the furniture because you want it.

You’re trying to honor what it meant to somebody else.

That’s a very human part of this work.

Host: Why do you think people have such a difficult time letting go?

Cameron: I think our things become physical representations of people, places and periods of our lives.

An object can remind you of somebody.

It can remind you of an experience.

It can represent a version of yourself.

Then it becomes difficult to separate the object from whatever emotion you’ve attached to it.

But the things in our homes aren’t actually the people we’re trying to remember.

And the way you feel about an object doesn’t necessarily have to reflect the way that person felt about it.

Trying to separate those emotions is often the first hurdle.

Once you can begin doing that, the decisions about the stuff itself can get easier.

Cameron: A customer once described this relationship to me as:

“Messy bed, messy head.”

The physical environment around us can create friction.

Things can feel out of order.

You can have stuff everywhere and eventually become so accustomed to it that you don’t consciously notice it anymore.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t affecting you.

Sometimes people reach a point where they simply need some of that physical noise removed before they can think clearly about what comes next.

And we see that particularly during major life transitions.

Cameron: There was a specific job early in the business that really changed the way I thought about what we were doing.

We were working with a woman whose husband had passed away.

She had a large basement full of things. It wasn’t a hoarding situation. He had been a collector, and there was simply a lifetime of stuff down there.

She was walking through pointing at things:

“That can go.”

“This can go.”

“That can go.”

There wasn’t an obvious pattern to it.

But I realized she was pointing to the things she didn’t personally have an emotional connection to.

She was trying to quiet the noise.

She needed to make room—physically and mentally—before she could deal with the harder decisions.

So we took those things away.

Then we went to the landfill.

I remember looking at the guy I was working with and thinking:

This feels wrong.

We had solved her problem.

We had reduced some of the stress and helped her begin moving forward with grieving and managing the household.

But now we had contributed to another problem.

There was this enormous landfill, with an endless stream of trucks coming in, and we had just added to the pile.

So we started asking:

How do we solve the customer’s problem without simply creating another problem somewhere else?

Cameron: Donation was an obvious place to start.

But donation isn’t always the answer.

There are perfectly usable items that charities simply can’t take. Maybe they’re too large, too heavy, difficult to sell or there isn’t enough demand.

So we started exploring resale.

We created what became our Second Life program.

But that created another question.

If a customer pays us to remove something and then sees us reselling it, are they going to think we’re double dipping?

There are real costs involved in transporting, storing, listing and selling those items, but we didn’t want to constantly defend our intentions.

So we created a giving component.

A portion of the proceeds from resale goes to the Isabella Santos Foundation, which supports rare pediatric cancer research.

Another portion goes to our crew as a bonus.

That part is intentional too.

Taking something to the landfill is easy.

Preserving an item, loading it carefully, bringing it back, storing it and finding another person who can use it requires additional effort.

We want to give our team an incentive to make that better decision.

Then the next time they have the opportunity, hopefully they make it again.

Cameron: B Corp certification came into the picture organically too.

At one point, I received an email from a small dog-bed company announcing that it had become B Corp certified.

I remember thinking:

Small companies can do this?

That stuck with me.

I liked the idea of having an outside framework that could validate and hold us accountable for the kind of company we were trying to build.

Eventually, that became part of Trash & Stash.

It helped us put structure around balancing environmental responsibility, community impact, our employees and profitability.

Cameron: There’s an important reality to all of this.

We’re still a business.

We have employees to pay. Trucks to operate. A warehouse. Insurance. Disposal expenses.

We can’t save everything simply because saving it would be environmentally preferable.

The business has to work financially too.

I actually think that’s one of the more interesting challenges of sustainability.

How do we create systems where making the responsible choice also makes economic sense?

Sometimes it does.

If I can take metal somewhere to be recycled instead of paying to put it in a landfill, that’s better environmentally and financially.

If an item can be resold and kept in use, we’ve preserved value rather than paying to destroy it.

Purpose and profitability don’t always have to work against one another.

Cameron: We’ve become increasingly interested in the circular economy.

The traditional model is linear:

Make something. Buy it. Use it. Throw it away.

Circularity asks how we can keep products and materials in use longer.

Can it be reused?

Can it be repaired?

Can it be resold?

Can somebody else use it?

And if it can no longer function as the thing it was designed to be, can the materials be recovered and recycled?

The goal is to preserve as much value as possible before something becomes waste.

Cameron: Take a bicycle.

If someone doesn’t need the bicycle anymore, we could throw it away.

Or we could recycle the metal and recover some of its material value.

That’s better.

But if another person can continue using it as a bicycle, we’ve preserved much more.

Think about everything that went into creating that finished bicycle.

The materials had to be extracted and processed.

Someone designed it.

Someone manufactured it.

It was assembled, packaged, shipped, distributed and sold.

All of that value already exists in the finished product.

If we can keep it functioning as a bicycle, we preserve all of that.

That’s why reuse can be so powerful.

Cameron: When I worked in venue management, I went through the Disney Institute a couple of times.

They taught us that one of the most commonly asked questions in a Disney park is:

“What time is the three o’clock parade?”

At first that sounds ridiculous.

Three o’clock.

But that’s not really what the guest is asking.

They’re asking:

When should I get there?

Where should I stand?

What’s the best place to watch?

How early should I arrive?

There are all these questions underneath the question.

I’ve realized Trash & Stash has its own version.

People call us and say:

“I don’t know if you do this, because my stuff’s not junk.”

What they’re really saying is:

This stuff still has value. It’s still useful. It’s just no longer useful to me. Can you help me figure out what happens next?

That’s a completely different question from:

“Can you throw this away?”

And it’s an important distinction.

Cameron: We get photos texted to us all the time.

People say:

“Here’s what I’ve got. Where do I start?”

Sometimes we’re the right solution.

Sometimes we’re not.

If something doesn’t belong in the landfill and there’s another organization better equipped to handle it, we’re happy to point someone in the right direction.

I think that’s part of solving the actual problem.

Maybe you have something that’s still useful and you don’t know where it belongs.

Maybe you’re preparing for a move.

Maybe you’re clearing a space.

Maybe you’re trying to live more intentionally and sustainably.

The first step can simply be figuring out what the next best destination is.

Host: What would you say to somebody who recognizes themselves in this conversation and is having trouble letting go?

Cameron: I think the first hurdle is trying to separate the emotion from the object.

The things in our homes aren’t the people we’re trying to remember.

An object may remind you of someone.

It may represent a time in your life.

But getting rid of the object doesn’t mean you’re getting rid of the person or the memory.

And the way you feel about that item doesn’t have to be dictated by how the other person felt about it.

Once you can start separating those things, the decisions often become easier.

You can ask:

Does this still serve me?

Do I actually want it?

Could someone else appreciate it more?

Can I preserve its value without keeping it in my own home?

Those are different questions than simply asking whether something belongs in the trash.

Cameron: I don’t think the answer is that everybody needs to become a minimalist or stop buying things.

I’m certainly not perfect at this.

But I do think we can become more intentional.

Do I really need this?

Can I buy it secondhand?

Can I borrow it?

Can I repair what I already have?

And when I’m done with something, can somebody else use it?

If we make those decisions a little more thoughtfully, we can reduce some of the clutter in our own lives while also reducing what ultimately ends up in the landfill.

For us, that’s really what this has evolved into.

We started as a company that helped people get rid of stuff.

What we’ve become much more interested in is:

How do we help people make the best decision about what happens to that stuff next?

Host: Cameron, thank you so much for joining me on The Wisdom Transfer.

Cameron: Thanks so much for having me. It was great.