The hall closet in a Boomer household tends to function less like storage and more like a small archive of decades of household decisions, none of them ever quite finalized. Open it up and you’re looking at a genuine timeline of things that seemed worth keeping at some point.

Gen Z’s approach to storage runs a lot leaner, favoring active use over sentimental possibility. Here are six hall-closet staples they’d clear out without a second thought.

A Decade of Old Coats

Winter coats from several years, even decades, back tend to accumulate in a Boomer hall closet, kept on the logic that a coat still technically works even if it hasn’t been worn since a different decade of one’s life. Trends and body changes rarely triggered an actual clean-out. Gen Z is generally more willing to donate outerwear that isn’t in regular rotation, preferring a closet with a handful of coats they actually reach for over a packed rod representing every winter since 1995.

Board Games Missing Half Their Pieces

Family board games, often missing a die, several tokens, or half the original cards, still occupy real closet shelf space for years after they’ve technically stopped being playable as intended. There’s an assumption that the missing pieces might turn up eventually. Gen Z would rather donate or toss an incomplete game outright, or replace it with a fully intact secondhand copy, than keep storing a box that can’t actually deliver a full game night anymore.

A Stockpile of Vacuum Bags

Because vacuum bags for a specific older model can become harder to find over time, many Boomers bought them in bulk and stored a genuine surplus in the hall closet, sometimes enough to last years past the vacuum’s eventual replacement. It was a reasonable hedge against future scarcity. Gen Z’s bagless vacuum models have largely made the whole category obsolete, and even those still using bagged vacuums tend to reorder online as needed rather than maintaining a multi-year backup supply.

Broken Umbrellas, Kept “Just in Case”

An umbrella with a bent rib or a section of fabric no longer opening properly often still gets tucked back into the closet rather than thrown away, on the theory that a partially broken umbrella beats no umbrella at all in an emergency. Several of these can accumulate over the years. Gen Z tends to just replace a broken umbrella outright, since inexpensive new ones are widely available, rather than keep a rotating collection of ones that technically still open, mostly.

Encyclopedia Volumes Nobody Opens

A full encyclopedia set, once a genuine household investment often purchased through door-to-door sales that were common through much of the 20th century, still sits in some closets and bookshelves decades after search engines made the entire format obsolete. It’s kept more out of nostalgia or reluctance to discard a big purchase than actual reference use. Gen Z, who can look up any fact instantly, has essentially no functional use for a print encyclopedia and would clear the shelf space without hesitation.

A Box of Mismatched Gloves and Hats

A jumbled box or bin of winter gloves and hats, few of them in complete matching pairs, tends to live at the bottom of the hall closet, added to gradually over years without much sorting. Finding a matching pair on a cold morning becomes a small daily project. Gen Z prefers keeping just a couple of reliable, complete sets on hand, donating or discarding the singles and mismatches rather than letting a growing box of loose winter accessories take up permanent closet real estate.