Once you've been playing longer, you'll see. At the start you can pretty much just carry everything about, but later on you'll be sending armour and weapons to camp or dumping them on a character you think they might be useful on in certain situations.

Then, if and when you get a new companion (and you might not get them depending on your choices), you think "oh, I wonder what gloves I should put on him".

And that's when you realise that all the gear is scattered among the camp chests and characters in camp, and you end up just not bothering.

It's even a thing between your origin characters, as you mess about decking e.g. Gale in all the best magic gear, and then you need to use Wyll for something and you just can't be bothered to move it all over so don't use him because you know you're going to have to move it all back again when you want a companion that isn't such a whiny bastard.