How can you say non-living things do not have life living inside of them? These things breathe, reminisce, sigh out the essence of a person they were last used by. Every remnant, every corner reeks of their earlier presence and you try to find that person in bits and pieces. The slippers they wore before, the pan they cooked in, the tie they showed off, the books they touched, the lamp they bought for you, all these lifeless objects hold a tiny light of their owners. You could make a whole human out of the parts they left themselves in. It’s too hard to see these objects not breathing in their persona anymore.
Things do not make a room look empty. The absence of someone using them does.