What is the purpose of our material plenty?

One thing that we, as humans, are good at is creating tools to solve problems. Take fire, for example. We have a fascination with it because it can kill us, but we have also learned to harness it for its full power and might. So often, or at least, historically, we gathered material things to help us with the challenge of survival. It seems like nowadays we have become too good at surviving and we have an overindulgence of material plenty. So, perhaps we don’t have as many purposes for our things nowadays, but it sure is thought-provoking to inherit someone else’s stuff and ask, “What were you going to do with this? Why did you buy this?” Maybe we can take this time of solitude to go through some of our stuff and ask the same question.