Alison Stewart, a former reporter and news anchor, spent three years investigating America's unhealthy obsession with stuff. Her book, Junk: Digging Through America's Love Affair With Stuff, examines the private lives and profitable businesses associated with our craving for consumer goods. Stewart explains that junk business is big business:

Self-storage has its own association and lobbying group because it is big business, generating more than $24 billion in revenues in 2014. The United States is home to reportedly 48,500 to 52,000 self-storage units. That's about 2.3 billion square feet of storage. It is a business that has been called recession resistant by the Wall Street Journal.

Reality TV shows focusing on junk took off in the early 2000's. Stewart put together a list of such shows broadcast between 2003 and the end of 2015. She writes: "The real tension that exists between the desire to buy and own, positioned against the stress created by the acquisitions, makes perfect sense for nonscripted television." Here's a partial list of stuff-based reality TV shows: American Pickers, Auction Hunters, Auction Kings, Buried Treasure, Flea Market Flip, Hoarders, Junk Gypsies, Junkyard Wars, Pawn Stars, Picker Sisters, Storage Wars, and its spinoff Storage War Texas.