Cue taking-no-crap gate agent cruising on to plane and manually removing all coats/purses/laptop bags and chastising their owners. Long story short, it took about 15 minutes, but everyone learned their lesson on that flight and nobody had to gate-check anything.
^This should happen on every full flight.
This is one of my pet peeves. I understand about the people who are 6'5", but on my AA flight last week some teenage girl put all her crap up in the overhead. So did everyone else (except me, it seemed).
Even worse is the way people don't stow things efficiently. At least if you're putting your makeup bag or computer bag up there, stow it vertically and sideways. People always seem to stick in everything lengthwise, way at the back, as though they're afraid it's going to fly out. I have seen flight attendants sometimes go through and re-arrange poorly organized overheads. I've seen passengers lay a purse flat, and then line up a sweater next to it so that they take up most of a bin. I guess they want me to squash my stuff in on top of it?