There wasn't as much stuff present in John's store room as used to be.

[tufguy]

There wasn't as much stuff present in John's store room as used to be.

I would like to know whether I should use "there" before "used to be"?

 

[SoothingDave]

Yes, use "there." You can delete "present."

 

[tedmc]

We say "people are present at a place". Can we replace people with stuff/things?

 

[Tarheel]

If it's a person we say that person is either present or absent. (We can also say he's there or he isn't there.) If it's an object it's either there or it's missing. (It was supposed to be there, but it isn't.)

 

[emsr2d2]

We say "People are present at a place".

Do we? When have you ever used that sentence?

Can we replace "people" with "stuff/things"?

Are you asking if we can say "Stuff/Things are present at a place"? If so, no, we would never say that.

 

[Annabel Lee]

There wasn't as much stuff present in John's store room as used to be.

I would like to know whether I should use "there" before "used to be"?

Yes, use "there." You can delete "present."

"There" could actually be placed before or after "used to be":

There wasn't as much stuff in John's store room as there used to be.​

There wasn't as much stuff in John's store room as used to be there.​

If you put "there" before "used to be," it's dummy "there." If you put it after "used to be," it's adverbial "there."

Incidentally, I find "used to be" awkward in this sentence because we are already in a past-tense context ("wasn't"). The speaker intends "used to" refer to an earlier past time relative to "wasn't," and "used to" doesn't naturally carry the past-in-the-past sense of the past perfect. One solution would be to use "had used to," but not everyone finds the past perfect grammatical with "used to"; it's a dialectal matter. I'd prefer simply to opt for the past perfect with "be":

There wasn't as much stuff in John's store room as there had been.​

There wasn't as much stuff in John's store room as had been there.​