Django - staticfiles directory keeps getting creat

Question

There is a directory called "staticfiles" that gets created each time I run the django development web server:

python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

I have the staticfiles as one of my apps:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
#    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

A few other "static files" settings, which are probably unrelated:

# Static files
STATIC_URL = '/static/' # Url for static file serving
STATICFILES_DIRS = [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),] # Search directories for static files (otherwise, engine only searches within app directories

Why does this staticfiles directory keeps getting created? It's always empty.