Hidden Treasures: Why households retain unused products and opportunities to bring them back into use

Licentiatavhandling, 2025

Facilitating reuse of products is a key strategy to extending product lifetimes and reducing environmental impacts from consumption. However, once a product is no longer in use it is often retained in storage indefinitely rather than recirculated, limiting its potential for reuse in another household. This thesis seeks to enhance the understanding of household product retention with the hopes of increasing the recirculation of unused and retained products.

To examine this issue, this thesis adopts two complementary perspectives: person-product relationship and household practices. Drawing on findings from three papers and a synthesis exploring the interrelation of the perspectives, this thesis addresses the research question; Why are unused products retained in households, as opposed to being divested?

The findings reveal barriers to divestment, and more specifically product recirculation. From the perspective of the person-product relationship, three aspects are identified that influence the divestment decisions made about a specific product: perceived product benefits, perception of divestment work, and divestment conscience. From the household practice perspective, certain connections and key elements of practices contribute to the accumulation of unused products in storage, while others prevent products from exiting the storage in a way that brings the product into reuse. Additionally, the combined perspective reveals a negative synergy – households often wish to purge the accumulated mass of products in storage all at once but feel the need to make individual divestment decisions about each product. The tension from this negative synergy prevents products from being brought out of the storage and circulated back into use.

This thesis contributes with insights about what recirculating products entail for households’ everyday life. It identifies barriers that prevent unused products from being recirculated and attempts to translate these barriers into design opportunities that facilitate the recirculation of unused products.