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Mar

6

Thoughts on Clutter (Part 1 of 3): Why Do We Have So Much Stuff?





If you want a golden rule that will fit everything, this is it: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.
- William Morris (By way of Emily)

This is part one of a three-part series on clutter. I am writing this because I’m very interested in stuff: why we have it, want it, and have such a hard time parting with it. I will also write on how to get rid of it once we’ve decided to do so. I hope to explore this in detail over the rest of the week.

I am in the throes of the Simplicity Challenge right now and am spending a whole heck of a lot of time thinking about clutter and simplicity. After seeing a video about people who are possessed by their possessions that was posted at Get Rich Slowly, I came to realize that I keep a very clean house. Not one thing of mine is disorganized, and I am hard-pressed to remember the last time I couldn’t find something. I know what I own, and I keep a pretty home :) But I am beginning to see that a lot of people struggle with clutter, stuff, and junk in their lives.

All this is not to say that I’m immune to stuff, or that I live a deeply simple life. I understand that I am not perfect, but I have chosen to battle the things I own and to constantly question their purpose in my life.

Lately I have been blogging all about my attempt to purge every last unnecessary thing from my home, and about how it’s affecting my state of mind. I’ll tell you know, deciding to get rid of things feels pretty good. But it is challenging to determine what I honestly want to keep - my brain keeps saying “throw away” while my heart squeals “keep!” The brain is winning the battle - trust me.

I want to write more on clutter, and see if I can’t persuade you to join me in my quest for ultimate simplicity - the freedom from all stuff.

Why Do We Have So Much Stuff?

The suffering that you [...] go though, is very simply, at its most profound and basic level, the result of identifying with that which is in time. Christ said, “lay not your treasure where moth and dust doth corrupt.” Buddha says, “don’t cling to that which is in time.” They are giving you the secret of liberation from suffering.
- Ram Dass *

I have recited this verbatim to many of my friends before. They tell me I’m crazy, but I don’t care. I’m prospering in my own little life, in my own little way. And I am free from suffering like they can’t even understand. But I had to start somewhere. For me, it started with getting rid of stuff and my need of stuff.

Overwhelmingly, my opinion is that most people have too much stuff. But why?

We Define Ourselves By Our Stuff

Drive a nice car? Own a great wardrobe, or fantastic jewelry? What about your cell phone? Or your collection of DVDs? Look at you. You are really impressive!

Its no lie that we suffer the psychological delusion that we are our stuff - it’s bombarding us all day on the radio, on tv, online, and in the world as we see it. And because we believe it, so does everyone else; it’s a self-perpetuating cycle. As long as we live as if our stuff is an extension of ourselves, and as if it makes our cool factor go up, and as if being “cool” even matters, we encourage ourselves and others to continue to follow the path of consumption.

Jacob hits the nail on the head with this quote, which I’ve referenced before:

You are not what you own despite what the commercials try to tell you. On the same note, sitcoms are basically designed to portray the perfect consumer life.

And unfortunately, shopping leads to more shopping. We can find it very easy to get caught up in the cycle of buying new things to frequently replace the things we already own. But isn’t that the American dream? To have everything you ever wanted?

Actually, the American dream is to be anything we want to be. This is my argument, anyway. I doubt you ever dreamed of being a BMW. We are granted three inalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I will forever posit that happiness comes from the freedom from things, and in finding joy in living.

But what if we aren’t happy? What if our pursuit of happiness turns us to buying things to make us happy?

We Replace Emotional Voids With Stuff and Things

We can get jumbled up in trying to be happy. People often buy things because they are trying to fill a void within them - emotionally or spiritually. I know that when I’m craving chocolate or a cigarette, most of the time I’m really just dehydrated and craving water. Until recently, I was unconscious of this, and would just grab for the chocolate or the smokes. Similarly, when we feel depressed or lonely, when we’re subconsciously in need of something, many times we opt to buy something to make ourselves feel better.

This is not conscious behavior, for the most part. Unlike the woman who declares, “I’ve had a crummy day! I am going to buy shoes to make it all better,” most of us are not deliberately trying to fill up our insides with things. But as Lynnae wrote, buying more is an attempt to fill the need for something more, and she goes on to explain:

When we don’t feel we measure up to our friends and neighbors, we buy a new outfit, to convince ourselves that we’re worth it. The problem is, the feeling wears off quickly, leaving us just as depressed, and $50 poorer. If we’re lucky, we paid cash. Unfortunately, sometimes we go into debt to try to satisfy an emotional need. And the debt only makes things worse.

We buy to feel loved, to feel secure, to feel valuable. We buy things to make ourselves feel successful. I have noticed that when I am doing really well in life, living on the high of success and accomplishment, I have no need to try and feel successful by way of the things I own. But when I was floundering in debt and stuck in a crap job, I bought thousands of dollars in clothes and vacations - because they made me feel like I was a triumph, instead of a failure.

We Attach Our Lives and Worth to Our Things

Like defining ourselves by our things, we define our worth by them as well. How often have you thought highly of someone because of something they owned? And was that thing a 401(k)? Probably not - it was probably a fancy car or new gadget. For someone with low self-confidence, having something shiny and new to offer the world seems like a great way to boost confidence. Look at me! Look what I can buy/do/have! It’s not so much as a cry for attention as it is equating human value to item value.

We also keep things for the memories they bring. While I agree that keeping old letters from family members and close friends is a fine idea if that’s what you do, there is certainly no reason to keep a vase you hate just because your late aunt gave it to you. But we keep the things anyway. When selling my CD’s, I had a big issue letting go of many albums, even though I hadn’t listened to some of them for three years! But they reminded me of high school and my old friends. It was only when I realized that CD or not, I would still have the memories, that I was able to give it up and sell them.

Is It This New Age of Abundance? Or Our Inability to Face Death?

We may think that by owning stuff we “win” over our mortality. As a commentator expertly said on Early Retirement Extreme:

I have to wonder: Is the inability to value one’s time ([and instead] hyper-accumulating Things) simply an inability to accept one’s inevitable departure from this world? Do people who have an acquisitive mentality towards life have an inherent denial of death, and thus seek to “escape” into their goods, which are for all intents and purposes replacements for “immortality” (objects do not “die” after all, although they do depreciate!)

What a fantastic insight. Jacob wrote a whole post/response to this in his blog, where he responded:

I lean more towards the theory that people (or rather our culture) are not yet used to everything being abundant and practically available on demand that everybody is still hoarding their own tool collection, their own library, their own car, their own home cinema, etc.

Again, such good stuff! What brain food. Is it that we’re not able to grasp the true abundance around us, and so we stockpile? In a fantastic essay entitled Stuff, Paul Graham explores this idea:

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can’t afford a front yard full of old cars.

It wasn’t always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable. You can still see evidence of that if you look for it. For example, in my house in Cambridge, which was built in 1876, the bedrooms don’t have closets. In those days people’s stuff fit in a chest of drawers. Even as recently as a few decades ago there was a lot less stuff. When I look back at photos from the 1970s, I’m surprised how empty houses look. As a kid I had what I thought was a huge fleet of toy cars, but they’d be dwarfed by the number of toys my nephews have. All together my Matchboxes and Corgis took up about a third of the surface of my bed. In my nephews’ rooms the bed is the only clear space.

Stuff has gotten a lot cheaper, but our attitudes toward it haven’t changed correspondingly. We overvalue stuff.

I think we can easily say that for each one of us, the reasons for having our stuff is individual. But whether we have things because we ended up with them and like having them around, or because we feel the need to show off… or because we feel valuable because of our things, or because we think that without them we will feel empty… whatever the reason, I think we can acknowledge that we have too much stuff.

Now that we’ve looked at the reason we have stuff, it’s time to look at why we should get rid of the stuff - the negative whys and the positive whys. On to part two: Why We Should Let Go.
* An excerpt from his Seasons Of Our Lives lecture. The copy I have was recorded live by my dad sometime in the 80’s. The quote was transcribed by me.

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Filed Under Self-Help and Personal Progress, simple living 

Comments

4 Responses to “Thoughts on Clutter (Part 1 of 3): Why Do We Have So Much Stuff?”

  1. Kathy@Brazoscowgirl on March 6th, 2008 6:27 am

    Shanti,
    This is something you notice when you live around older homes, they raised bigger families with less room decades ago. The houses were smaller, with small kitchens and bathrooms.

    Great article, I am in the process of watching that movie, thanks for the link.

  2. Jennifer on March 6th, 2008 4:34 pm

    Great post! I have been doing a lot of thinking about the stuff in my home too. I would like to get rid of at least half! I started in one room (an easy one) and got rid of (donated, sold, threw away) about 5 trash bags full of stuff. It took me a good week and I’m only about 85% done that room. I have a looong way to go! Thanks for the inspiration!

  3. The Executioner on March 7th, 2008 11:41 am

    Stuff is definitely ubiquitous in modern American life. As I’ve been reflecting on my own financial situation, I’ve made a few realizations about the accumulation of stuff:

    1. The most effective way to minimize stuff is to stop buying it in the first place. This stops the buildup of clutter at home, and frees up cash to be used to pay down debt and/or accumulate wealth.
    2. It’s necessary to purge the stuff that you already have. This can be a daunting task if you’ve been living in the same place for a while and have not been judicious about what you keep around. On the plus side, selling stuff can generate extra cash; however, sorting through your possessions to determine what to keep and what to sell can turn into a long project. Lately I’ve been using an arbitrary rule of thumb that if I haven’t looked at or used something in the past year, I don’t need to have it around (with the exception of keepsakes like photos).
    3. Even if you get a handle on 1 & 2, our culture encourages us to constantly give stuff to (and accept stuff from) others. Think of how many social occasions implicitly require the exchange of stuff: Xmas, birthdays, weddings, bridal showers, baby showers, graduations, housewarming parties, retirement, and so on. And it’s considered tacky to give (or request) cash which could easily be used to pay down debt or add to savings. I’ve told my friends and family members to stop giving me stuff, and to expect the same from me in return. However, not everyone is open to this “radical” idea. Apparently the simple pleasure of spending time with others is not enough for some people.

    A final paradox is this: I have been working hard to sell my extra stuff (on eBay, for example) to help pay off my mortgage early. However, in order for this strategy to be successful, I’m relying on others to accumulate my old stuff, and part with their money in the process. And yet my desire is for our culture in general to become less materialistic. But since it’s not possible for me to force others to see the benefit of living more simply, I’ll take advantage of the situation for my own personal gain.

  4. Niru on March 12th, 2008 4:08 pm

    Shanti,

    I love your references. I have personally been going crazy recently to reduce clutter and augment simplicity in my life. I had accumulated so many “things” recently, that I cannot imagine what I was thinking at that time.

    To begin with, I have been donating a lot clothes recently and have decided not to buy clothes for some time to come. I cut down my kitchen to the bare necessities (who needs the fancy knives & the geeky appliances?).

    Good luck with your effort!

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