Isn't that so interesting! Can you say one stuff, two stuff, three stuff more. No. But you can count "things" - one thing, two things, and so on. So stuff is more general - uncountable and collective. An undefined mass or mixture of objects, materials, or tasks. That's why there is an academic project to catalogue all the physical objects - it is called things-initiative.org and there's nothing for that mass and jumble of miscellaneous items.
It makes me think thats why we often see what we own as being referred to as stuff. A moving company would know how much "stuff" we have - between 1,500 and 3,000 individual items beyond clothes, books, and kitchen drawer stuff for two adults in an apartment. That would translate into about 500 to 1,000 cubic feet of volume and fit in a standard 10 foot to 15 foot moving truck.
Make that a detached house and there is now 3,000 to 5,000 individual items. Your garage alone has between 100 to 300 items for lawn care, cleaning, and so on.
Now add two children and you have 10,000 to 15,000 individual items. There are 9.000 to 14,000 pounds of belongings. There's a category named hidden storage - garage, basement, closets - which accounts for 30% of total volume. My guess is garages hold more than 300 items.
Equipment and gear sound like they have purpose. But consider hobbies like collecting vinyl records, model cars, vintage items. A collection of 13,201 frog-related items makes collecting stuff an activity that gets one fame in the Guinness Book of Records. That's a small collection compared to the Guinness Records for other things - 60,000 Star Wars Memorabilia collection. Or video games - over 24,000. Someone has more than 18,500 Barbie Dolls. How do you store the largest fossilized poop collection? There are 1,277 pieces. And they have to be catalogued and photographed so become "things" being managed.
The distinction of "stuff" is that it resists being counted, being discrete and individual. "Things" are discrete and individual and possess an identify.
Here's the joke to sum up this topic:
I went to a seminar on how to organize my things. Halfway through, I realized I didn't have organized things—I just had an overwhelming pile of stuff.
George Carlin spoke wonderfully on the subject - the link is HERE.
And when I did a search for "stuff" in my picture database this image came up - file it under "funny stuff."
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