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Mar

7

Thoughts on Clutter (Part 2 of 3): Why We Should Let Go





This is an incredibly long post on stuff and clutter. This is part two of a three-part series on clutter in this generation in United States today. Feel free to read it in chunks!

We live in a very affluent country. Things are relatively cheap and credit is easy to get. We are all caught into what I call an orgy of consumption. If one is good, two is better. Let’s supersize that! This out of-control consumption is evident everywhere from the size of our homes and our cars to the obesity of our population. We are also caught into the ‘promise’ that comes with what we buy – buy these jeans, your butt will look smaller or buy this cookwear, you’ll make better dinners or buy this car, you’ll look more successful. The promise is alluring and we fall for it time and time again. Clutter is a problem in the western world particular but we Americans have really made an artform of it. - Peter Wash (Interview at Unclutterer.com)

We live in a world of stuff. I discussed the whys part one: Why Do We Have So Much Stuff?

In the last discussion, I revealed that reasons for WHY we have stuff make a web of interrelated issues that we all deal with: the need for approval, the battle against mood slumps or depression, a desire to “keep up” with the “cool” people, and the fact that many of us attach our memories and our self worth to what we own.

In this post, I will relate to you why I feel we should get rid of stuff. There are all the negative reasons, or course, but there are many positive reasons as well! Let’s explore.

The Negatives

Clutter Causes Stress

In an about.com article, Elizibeth Scott, M.S., reveals that, “The most obvious toll that clutter takes is added stress on one’s life.” Why?

  • Having guests over becomes an embarrassment, or an event that takes all-day preparation.
  • Each room carries visual reminders of all the work that needs to be done in the way of cleaning.
  • Using your home for activities like scrapbooking or yoga becomes difficult or impossible without taking significant time to clear the space.
  • According to the principles of Feng Shui, clutter drains you of your positive energy. You can actually feel it.
  • A cluttered home, rather than a haven from stress, is a big stressor in itself, and intensifies the frustration and exhaustion that an already-stressed person feels.

An additional stress is the feeling of “But I paid for this!” Peter Walsh says that there are only two kinds of major clutter people obtain. I discussed five reasons in the last post, but I was talking about ALL stuff above and beyond needs - he is talking only about overly-packed homes. The two kinds of clutter, according to him, are:

Memory Clutter – which reminds one of an important person, or achievement or event from the past – and I-Might-Need-It-One-Day Clutter – this is the stuff held onto in preparation for all possible futures that one might encounter.

The I-Might-Need-It-One-Day personality is more likely to stock up on items, just in case one day they may need it. But as My Two Dollars wrote:

Just because you paid for something does not mean it is bringing any value to your life; on the contrary, it could be causing you great distress. [...] Every time I try to help them get organized, they say “But I paid $X.XX for that, I can’t get rid of it!”. But really, they can…they just don’t want to because they feel like it is a waste of money.

This worry that one’s money is being wasted if the things are given away or sold is another form of stress. What needs to be realized is that the cost to buy the unused things in the first place is great, and is more of a waste of money than getting rid of the hoarded stuff. My Two Dollars then continued, relating the same point of view as I have:

Keeping something you don’t use and probably never will use again is not saving you any money; you already bought whatever it is, so you already spent the money. It’s gone, you cannot get it back. Forget about it…it’s history. Sayonara! It does not matter how much you spent or how long ago you spent it, the money is irreplaceable.

Speaking of money…

Hoarding Clutter is Costly

At BeingFrugal.net, Lynnae wrote about when buying on sale isn’t frugal. She pointed out that buying in bulk (or hoarding) is not a good buy when you won’t use the stuff:

25 pounds of mangos for $10 isn’t a great deal if you won’t eat 25 pounds of mangos before they go bad. Wastefulness is never frugal. Before you buy a lot of something on sale, make sure you will be able to use it. This is even true for things besides food and perishables. If pumpkin pie spice scented candles are on clearance after Thanksgiving, figure out how many you’ll actually use, before buying 100 candles.

We live in a society where excess is the norm. If one candle is good, 100 must be better right? Wrong! Don’t be excessive. There’s no need to be. Next year pumpkin pie spice candles will be on clearance again right after Thanksgiving. So only buy what you will reasonably use in the next year. Don’t go overboard.

JD at Get Rich Slowly summarizes it well: “[...] it costs money to acquire the Stuff we hoard. It costs money to store it.” By working on our habit to buy so many things, we can prevent more clutter form coming into our lives, and limit the amount of money going out.

Clutter Controls You

Paul Graham wrote in his essay entitled Stuff:

[...] once you’ve accumulated a certain amount of stuff, it starts to own you rather than the other way around. I know of one couple who couldn’t retire to the town they preferred because they couldn’t afford a place there big enough for all their stuff. Their house isn’t theirs; it’s their stuff’s.

Having too much stuff (I extend the term stuff to everything we own, not just the cluttered junk) can cause us to make decisions based solely on the stuff! It’s more likely that your stuff owns you, rather than you owning it.

Jacob at Early Retirement Extreme wrote a great post called Is Your Stuff Holding You Back? In it, he points out that stuff and clutter will limit your choices in life, much like it did for the couple Paul Graham wrote about above. Jacob expands on this:

Stuff limits one’s choices. It holds one back. For instance, last time we moved, 1 bedroom houses and apartments were not an option because we “needed” the extra bedroom to store the extra stuff we practically never use. [...] I am afraid that one day we might end up using the garage as an overflow reservoir for the stuff that continuously [comes] in through the front door. Yikes! This means that we would need a 24′ truck to move and that we could only live in 3+ bedroom places.

This would require a higher rent and a higher deposit. In addition there would be more rooms to heat and keep clean. This in turn would take away time [by way of needing to earn more money] and require me to accumulate more assets [money] to support it. See a problem here? [...] I need my freedom to choose where to live and where and whether to work more than I need another gadget, book, piece of clothing, weight set, CD, etc.

In The Simple Dollar’s review of the book Debt Is Slavery, he summarized chapter three:

The third chapter brings another stern point - that the most valuable parts of your life aren’t things, but experiences. Thus, the stuff you buy is effectively paid for by lost experiences. Let’s say, for example, that you spend $2,000 on a flat panel television. That same $2,000 could be used to go to Disney World with your six year old kid. Which one will stick with you emotionally for the rest of your life?

I’m slowly starting to come around to this perspective. My best memories of my life as a husband and a parent are about experiences, not about stuff. Shouldn’t I be devoting my financial resources to more of these experiences instead of accumulating more things?

Clearly, owning more things actually means that you are allowing more things into your life which control YOU. This can also be used to describe the habit of “keeping up with the Joneses”: If you are in a constant state of trying to buy to be better, you are controlled by that emotion, and your time and energy and money are no longer yours, they belong to the need.

Stuff Causes Low-Self Esteem and Depression

Though we may feel good, or have an emotional high while we are buying something new, the repercussions can be very harsh. Ever hears of buyer’s remorse? In a fantastic post entitled Shut The Stuff Up!, The Butler Project explores the idea that stuff causes low self-esteem:

[...] studies are now showing excess Stuff actually bolsters low self esteem, and is related to self-doubt. So, while you think others are thinking more of you because of your Stuff, you are actually thinking less of yourself and feeling down about it.

In a post on The Daily Galaxy, they write about the Consumer Paradox:

Researchers have found that low self-esteem and materialism are not just a correlation, but also a causal relationship where low self esteem increases materialism, and materialism can also create low self-esteem. The also found that as self esteem increases, materialism decreases.

So perhaps if we work on ourselves and try to enjoy life rather than things, we can cut this consumerism in ourselves and actually be happier for it? This has been my experience, for sure.

These are all negative reasons why we should get rid of clutter (the reasons clutter brings us down), but there are positive reasons to get rid of clutter, too!

The Positives

Buying Less Stuff… Will Save You Money

Obviously, if you buy less things, you’ll save more money. But there are hidden costs to clutter as well. If you have to have a bigger house or apartment to store all of your stuff, you will have to spend more money on the extra space. At Early Retirement Extreme, Jacob writes:

Parring one’s possessions down by even one bedroom might mean a monthly savings of $200 on mortage or rent costs which if saved would turn into a quarter million at the time of retirement.

Just that small savings a month will be millions if invested instead! Also, the stuff is expensive and only depreciates with time (almost all things, anyway). Paul Graham summarizes this best:

What I didn’t understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn’t the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it. Stuff is an extremely illiquid asset. Unless you have some plan for selling that valuable thing you got so cheaply, what difference does it make what it’s “worth?” The only way you’re ever going to extract any value from it is to use it. And if you don’t have any immediate use for it, you probably never will.

I have argued for a while that buying quality is always a better idea too - as opposed to buying the same stuff over and over again, as it breaks or becomes “out of date.” Buying something quality ONCE can save you from buying something cheap hundreds of times over. I wrote, in my post Why I Don’t Buy Cheap:

Quality things last longer, work better, and will save you from re-purchasing all the time. If you buy something truly worth the money it cost, you could potentially own it for the rest of your life. A good, quality item won’t lose its value quickly, will stay nice longer, and will be something that will genuinely give you “your money’s worth.” [...] I’ve had a shift in perspective; that shift was a choice to see long-term rather than short. In the long term, everyone wants to be prosperous and successful. One step to cutting expenses, and therefore (theoretically) gaining wealth, is to stop buying the same crap over and over again. Like cell phones.

My friend’s dad bought his CD player in 1989 and it still works today. The player cost him about $1000 at the time - adjusted for inflation that is equivalent to about $1730 today. Who on Earth would pay that much for a CD player?! But consider that the average lifespan of a CD player today (before people upgrade or they break) is about 3 years, if that. $1730/6.3 (the number of 3-year periods between 1989 and today) equals about $96! That means that in the amount of time he’s had his CD player, he’s spent less than the average stereo cost by hundreds. And he has no reason to buy a stereo any time soon, either.

Buying Less Stuff… is Better For The Environment

Stuff is meant to be consumed. In fact, most things made today are intended to break down in a year or two, just so that we’ll have to buy again. The statistic is that nearly 100% of what we buy ends up in the trash. My To Dollars raved about a video called the Story of Stuff, which I saw about six months ago. The video is awesome, and I encourage you to take 20 minutes and watch it, if you haven’t already. My Two Dollars, wrote:

I am a big advocate of clearing out the clutter, buying only what you need, and using what you have until it is completely unusable. The reason I am like this? Because only 1% of everything we consume is still in use 6 months down the road. Yes, you read that right - 1%. And that other 99% either ends up in our bodies, the landfill, or a recycling bin…but mostly the landfill, where it is incinerated into a nice toxic gas.

By buying less, we consume less materials and labor from the world, and in turn create less pollution. I know it seems like we’re ants against God in this respect, but think of the impact of a million people choosing to not buy any more crap! Think of a million people deciding to grow some of their own food. Think of a million people deciding to buy quality things and never buying them again!

Remember my friend’s dad above? Instead of buying lower-end things for less money every couple of years, by buying one good thing and eliminating the continuing consumption, we ultimately save ourselves from more stuff going into landfills. In the period of time that said friend’s dad has had his one CD player, millions of other people have gone through 4, 6, 10, or even more CD players, and all the discarded ones? Went into the trash.

Buying Less Stuff… Allows Us to Cherish What We Do Have

And finally, it’s all about life. In the end, what really matters? The things you own or the memories that you have? Would you rather keep your friend or your car? Your childhood memories or your house? Ultimately, we all want to love our lives and be surrounded by great people and happiness. By reducing our need for, and our constant consumption of, stuff, we allow ourselves to revel in the joy of being! And to find other ways to satisfy ourselves than by owning things.

Lynnae at BeingFrugal.net wrote a great post that I encourage you to read, called Why The Minimalist Lifestyle Appeals to Me. In it, she wrote about learning to be content with what she has:

I really believe that having an overabundance of stuff breeds discontentment. It seems that the more things a person has, the more they need. I know that’s true in my life. When I have the ability to buy more, I find that I start buying to fill some sort of unmet need in my life. By cutting down the amount of stuff I allow myself to buy, I force myself to deal with my discontentment. I need to learn to be content with what I have and find satisfaction in my relationship with God, my family life, and with who I am as a person.

She also continued with a reference to the Laura Ingalls Wilder books which I read literally dozens of times when I was a kid. She really spoke to my heart with this:

By forcing myself to cut down on the amount of stuff I own, I cut out the stuff that I’m ambivalent about. By embracing minimalism, I cut out everything but what I really love. I remember reading Little House in the Big Woods as a child, and I remember reading about Laura and her doll, Charlotte. Laura LOVED Charlotte. I think she loved her so much because Charlotte was her only doll. Charlotte was precious. Charlotte was special. How many things do I own that I consider to be truly special? My photographs are special. Everything else? Not so much.

In conclusion, I think we can all see that we could do away with most of our stuff and be happier, help the envoronment, and help others see how they can change by following our example. This is incredibly detailed and long-winded and if you’ve read this far, you deserve a gold star and a fanfare. ;)
Now that we’ve looked at why we have so much stuff, and examined why we should get rid of it, we need to look at just HOW to get rid of all our stuff! This is the next and final post in the series, coming this weekend.

Thoughts?

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Filed Under Self-Help and Personal Progress, money and finance, simple living 

Comments

4 Responses to “Thoughts on Clutter (Part 2 of 3): Why We Should Let Go”

  1. Kathy@Brazoscowgirl on March 9th, 2008 10:55 am

    Wonderful article, it takes a while to get through it because you have done it so well! Thanks for the work you have done on this.

  2. Emily on March 9th, 2008 7:19 pm

    Wow, you have really gone deep on this–I love it!

    The thing is, a person can read and read about the idea that Stuff is actually tying them down, but until they start getting rid of it, they wont* understand. So, if you are one of those people who thinks dejunking is a good idea, but is yet to try it, Just Do It! Look around you right now, if you see anything that is not genuinely useful or making you happy, get rid of it! You will love it, I promise.

    *yes, I know there should be an apostrophe here, but sometimes the apostrophe on my macbook pro gets hijacked by “quick find” and I cant leave an apostrophe anywhere! if you know how to help, please do. thanks. I think Ill restart now.

  3. shanti on March 9th, 2008 7:46 pm

    Hi Emily! Thanks for your comment. Yeah - it’s the DOING that’s the hard part. Part 3 - http://www.antishay.com/?p=72 - is all about that :)
    As for quick find - that appears by pressing “/” - it’s a firefox tool to let you search a page for keywords without having to hit “cmd+F” :) You are probably hitting the “/” key when you hit the apostrophe key ;) Hope that helps!

  4. Rose on March 10th, 2008 12:16 am

    I am fully and 100% in agreement and have been for years. Several years ago, I read “Clear Your Clutter with Feng Shui” (Karen Kingston) and it really made an impact. I’m not a hoarder or collector and never have been; I don’t buy things I don’t need, even if they are on sale. That would be a dumb thing to do, in my book. Nonetheless, she made on point that really hit me right between the eyes: When you hoard or hold onto things “just in case” you’ll need them in the future, you’re telling the Universe/God/Higher Power that you really don’t trust that you’re loved and that you’ll be taken care of. *You don’t trust that you’re loved and will be taken care of.* You hoard and hold on out of fear that you won’t have it when you need it. I don’t want to do things that are fear-based, so that made an impact on me. Now I trust and know that when I need something, there will be a way that it - or something better - will materialize. It’s very freeing to release that fear and to release clutter, not holding on to things ” just in case.”

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