We have too much stuff.

Shelves, basements, closets, drawers and garages are loaded with threadbare books, yellowed magazines and newspapers, decade-old fashions, busted-up salt and pepper shaker collections, musty comic books, chipped vinyl records, ripped baseball cards, stray buttons from long-gone coats … the examples can go on for days.

Accumulation, its pros and cons, and its effects upon the human state have become a national obsession and, in turn, big business. Flip on the TV and you’ll find countless shows devoted to our “stuff,” from Hoarder’s examinations of compulsive, out-of-control accumulators to the benign collection appraisals of Antiques Roadshow and beyond.

Subdued behind many of these shows’ sympathetic profiles and eyes wide with dollar signs are the emotional connections. Our “stuff” is much more than just junk. It’s moments stuck in time — souvenirs of places visited and lived; of people met and loved. Conversely, our stuff can reflect who we are, both in our eyes and in the eyes of others. Grandmother’s broken teacup that she drank black coffee from every morning is more than simple scrap to her family. It is her memory in ceramic.

The personal connection that exists between people and the objects in their lives — and the deep emotional scars that these objects possess and unleash — is the driving force behind Auctioning the Ainsleys, the lovely new production currently being mounted by Dog and Pony Theatre Company.

Directed by Dan Stermer and written by Laura Schellhardt, the show portrays the Ainsley family, a dysfunctional clan who run an auction house. Their lives revolve around the daily organizing, restoring and selling of objects to the highest bidder. However, while dealing with the discards of others, the Ainsleys — matriarch Alice, and her adult children, tightly wound Annalee, flighty and organized Amelia, and bitingly sarcastic Aiden — have ignored the serious troubles within their own family.

When aging Alice, who lives cloistered on the top floor of the Ainsley home, hires an assistant to document the family history and puts the home and its contents up for auction, the turmoil rises to the surface again. It also prompts the return of the elder prodigal daughter, fast-talking auctioneer Avery, whose forceful presence unearths secrets and objects that the family hoped would remain buried forever.

Much like its deep set decorated in dark woods and vintage items, Auctioning the Ainsleys is both cozy and mysterious. With quirky characters, twee music design, slight forays into fantasy-realism, and easy transitions from laugh-out-loud comedy to dark emotionality, the production recalls the lovable, yet unhinged family dramas captured by filmmaker Wes Anderson (Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore).

The players all deliver note-perfect performances, but Matthew Sherbach steals the show as Aiden, the rail-thin, youngest sibling whose distain for collecting and collectors is as sharp as his tongue. His shifts from funny, yet harsh insult-thrower to naïve, vulnerable innocent are a wonder to watch.