Stuff --- A cluttered life

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vexed87
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by vexed87 »

Did wrote:When my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said, could you throw three things out....
Great, I'll try this with SO's wardrobes (yes plural) full of clothes! Most of it is never worn... sigh. Admittedly she doesn't buy it, but is an only daughter from a family of 7 women so gets gifted clothes on a weekly basis almost.

jacob
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by jacob »

I think almost all activities require something like this
a) the skills (knowing already, hiring someone, learning how to)
b) the tools (having them already, renting them, buying them)
c) the supplies (owning them already, buying them when needed)

There's a fine balance between how work one does, how quickly it can get done, and the amount of time and money it takes.

ffj is an example of someone who knows a lot, owns a lot of tools, and owns a lot of supplies. So he can get a lot done fast. He doesn't need to spend time learning or money (and time) hiring. All tools are available. There's no need to spend time or money renting them. The supplies are mostly there too. I'm heading in that direction too (the "homestead" direction). The benefit is that one can get a lot of stuff done fast and for less cost in time and money if one knows how and have the supplies at hand.

Most minimalists I've run into (it's somewhat of an occupational hazard for me :geek:) seem to get around not owning stuff or supplies by renting or buying services. For example, the majority seem to either eat out all the time (alternatively, they cheat and don't count their kitchen utensils as part of their 37 items) or live on a diet of rotisserie chicken and ready-to-eat salads or cafeteria food. Activities are either inherently minimal (the more typical choice) and is almost always travel, working on the laptop, running, or doing yoga; or again, or they are rented (e.g. an apartment that come with janitorial services).

But I think the minimalism--homesteading axis is separate from what is going on in "stuff---a cluttered life).

What's more typical is that people have no general skills (they're specialist worker-consumers and their specialized work skill stuff is at work), but they still have tools. The hope was buying the tools would magically instil the skill in the owner. E.g. buying new skis will make me get into skiing/become a better skier. They also have way too many supplies. Like the SABLE principle mentioned above but for most things: clothes in the closet that still have the original tag on five years later when it has gone out of fashion; shrink wrapped DVDs; unread books; ... There's also the tendency to buy the set, the tool-supply issue. Instead of buying two pots, people buy a set of 8 pots and 2 pans to spave instead of just getting the original two pots that were required. Add upgrade fever. The problem here is that it is so much easier (in time) to buy stuff than it is to both learn how to use it and to get rid of it again (at least mentally). So because inflow by buying is much larger than outflow through either using up or getting rid up, homes are now mainly used to store all this stuff. And the reason it becomes clutter is that houses haven't been able to grow fast enough (rate for newbuilds is +25sqft/year) relative to the exponentially growing skill it requires to organize it.

I suspect that something akin to the Dunbar number also holds for our environment. We can hold a fixed number of items in our environment. We can hold more if we abstract it it. E.g. I don't own 8 screw drivers, I own 1 set of screw drivers. It's easy to keep the perspective of 100 items. It's much harder when three rooms contain 2200 items. Consider the task of getting rid of one item per day. With 100 items, you know what you have. You can see it. You can probably even list it mentally without too many errors. You can contrast and compare fairly quickly to select one. It would take you 3 months before you were down to nothing. With 2200 items, you'd have much less of an idea of what these things are (hence the tendency to buy yet another one because they forgot they already had one). Contrasting and comparing is a much much harder problem and once decided, finding the item might be impossible. And, this process would take six years to complete instead of three months.

jacob
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by jacob »


llorona
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by llorona »

ffj wrote:
When I drop things off at Goodwill, I am actually able to see the back of the store where they sort out all of the donated items. It is a veritable mountain of bags and bags of stuff. So yes, we have a problem with discardable items, I would agree.
Ooh, I used to work at an a nonprofit that ran thrift stores. I love telling stories about this.

The stuff that you see at the back of the thrift store is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider it a small hill, not a mountain. Most operations with more than one thrift store have a central warehouse where donated items are sorted. They literally have mountains and mountains of stuff -- clothing, books, suitcases, you name it.

Very little of the stuff that's donated actually goes to people who are poor or homeless. They don't need it. Everyone in America has more clothing than they know what to do with. Most of the stuff that's donated is either sold in thrift stores, recycled, or thrown out.

Typically, less than half of donated items are usable. That's because people donate all kinds of $hit -- torn and stained clothing, broken household items, etc. Once nonprofits sort out the stuff they can sell, it's not like they have a magic wand to make the rest of it disappear. Instead, they're left with hundreds of tons of unusable stuff.

For an operation that has its stuff together (no pun intended), they bale unusable clothing and ship it to third world countries. They also pull apart recyclable metals and plastics and sell that in bulk, too. If they have an electronics recycling program, they will pick and pull the pieces that can be recycled. We even used to have a guy who would come in and buy huge bins of shoes without mates - I have no idea what he did with them.

Sometimes thrift operations will sell full shipping containers of donated items for a set price. A lot of times, immigrants would buy those containers, pick and sort the stuff they wanted, and take the usable stuff to sell at flea markets or across the border.

We even used to have a program where artists could go through leftover junk and make art installations with it.

The rest -- probably at least 50% -- goes into landfill. And that, people, is what happens with your unwanted stuff. Think carefully before consuming!

FBeyer
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by FBeyer »

To counter the absolutely idiotic you-must-own-less-than-n-things-to-be-a-minimalist trend:
https://www.becomingminimalist.com/find ... s-for-you/

Becker has a lot going for him. Shoehorning Christianity into minimalism isn't one of them, but he says a lot of sensible things.

jacob
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by jacob »

Here's a classic book on a workable strategy when it comes to stuff: Buying "nothing".
http://www.amazon.com/Not-Buying-It-Wit ... 0743269365

It's written in a diary format and you get one person's perspective and journey when it comes to not buying stuff. I recognized several aspects of that journey like "abstinence", the feeling of window-shopping but actually no longer wanting to buy anything, the boredom from not buying, the quest for alternatives, and finding those alternatives. Since it's a diary format (the blogging of the 2006s) AND one of those "one-year doing X"-projects, it does contain the usual "then I talked to this person", "then I joined that group", "then I read this book" and this is what they told me. Here all the classics of the time (Duane Elgin, Jim Merkel, YMOYL, a Voluntary Simplicity group). Also, around August, the author gets quite involved in the 2004 election (TMI on that) and starts tying it together with anticonsumerism, while the focus on personal experiences with buying nothing is kinda lost. As is obvious from the reviews, the eventual political slant gets highly polarizing and if that wasn't there, the anticonsumerism message is a Wheaton level bulls eye---especially when coming from someone who's still consuming at a relatively high level to the median.

In any case, if this had been a five year project, it would have been realized that "buying nothing" is actually a steady state of being. Only buying replacements for things that have been worn out or things to support skills/activities that have already been learned greatly reduces any desire/need to buy.

vexed87
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by vexed87 »

Thanks for the link jacob, I'll leave it open on the laptop for SO to stumble across, planting a subliminal seed of sorts... :lol:

jacob
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by jacob »

@FBeyer - I think that whole n-things thing started with Dave Bruno's book which was another 1-year project book. (Here's a Ted talk with him.) The n-things is mainly just a gimmick or a goal post that make people consider their standards on an absolute scale rather than a badge of minimalism or you must be this tall to ride qualifier.

luxagraf
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by luxagraf »

llorona wrote:We even used to have a guy who would come in and buy huge bins of shoes without mates - I have no idea what he did with them.
This is killing me. I really, really want to know what he did with them.

My wife and I have been downsizing to move into an RV and one of my big takeaways from the experience is that stuff is bit like tasks... Parkinson's law says that any task automatically expands to fulfill the time allotted. My corollary is that unless you are militantly minimalist* stuff automatically expands to fill whatever space you have (nature, vacuums, abhorrence). One of the many reasons I look forward to having a very small home.

* One of the reasons minimalists tend to be irritating to non-minimalists is that a lot of them come off as overly militant, but I think in way they have to be in a culture that's awash in so much stuff.

Also, possibly related for those who want to up their minimalism game: http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/pa ... nkey-bars/

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GandK
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by GandK »

Project 333 was a great exercise. I did a variation of it (capsule wardrobe with a set amount of clothing) last year. I liked the result and I've kept at it. Every time an article of clothing comes into my closet, an article of the same type comes back out and is donated. And I only buy garments if they work with everything else in the capsule.

There is definitely a sort of rush one feels from paring down, assuming no unhealthy attachment to belongings exists. You feel lighter and more energized when you remove something from your life that you've decided is unnecessary or unhelpful. It's almost like a runner's high. I can see how people might take it to unhealthy extremes. I'm sure it's ripe for obsession/abuse just like every other adrenaline-producing activity.

Edit: I am also curious about the shoes! :shock:

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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by jacob »

@luxagraf - Maybe selling them to people with mismatched socks? :mrgreen:

Parkinson's law definitely applies. Perhaps because it HAS to apply. To illustrate, WRT stuff, I constantly optimize my stuff; conversely, DW is pleasantly lackadaisical about it. Conversely, when it comes time to relocate, which we do ever 3 years or so, I don't really have to do much of anything (indeed, a lot of my things are already in boxes), whereas DW has to scramble cleaning up, getting rid of stuff, etc. It's as if we're operating on different concepts of time. Incidentally, we do. I'm predominantly future oriented. She's mostly past oriented.

I think whenever anyone abberates from the mainstream orientation, they have to be ideological. Often they/we don't hide it well. This is either due to lack of inexperience or intentional.

luxagraf
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by luxagraf »

jacob wrote:I constantly optimize my stuff; conversely, DW is pleasantly lackadaisical about it. Conversely, when it comes time to relocate, which we do ever 3 years or so, I don't really have to do much of anything (indeed, a lot of my things are already in boxes), whereas DW has to scramble cleaning up, getting rid of stuff, etc.
I used to constantly optimize and I always thought it was just me, like a skill that I had. But then I bought a house and stayed in it for 8 years and got lazy about it. Came to discover that I had been constantly optimizing my stuff because I *had to* (prior to buying the house the longest I'd stayed at any one place was one year, lived that way for 15 years). But now, now it is a skill damnit.

George the original one
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by George the original one »

Mismatched & odd shoes:

http://oddshoefinder.com/about

As I recall, some charity also exists for amputees in poor countries.

Did
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by Did »

@jacob Good point re future orientation. I threw out a lot of high school style sentimental stuff in a clean out - year books etc. I thought about it and concluded that if I were ever to look through it I would just be an old fogie boring the pants off someone. Fuck that, I thought, I'm not done yet, and chucked it all in the skip.

In the 2.5 years since I left my job, I think I've purchased a few cookbooks, one rain jacket and a couple of jumpers (since I moved to ireland) along with walking boots.

(Excluding the cottage and renos).

I just don't think I get any satisfaction from purchases - the opposite.

DutchGirl
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by DutchGirl »

jacob wrote:
Ego wrote:Our bank accounts are too cluttered :lol:
If anyone here feels their bank accounts are too stuffy, you can paypal your excess cash clutter to me.
Snort. :lol:

Yes, I will also sacrifice my mental health: if you need to offload some cash clutter, send it to me.

FBeyer
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by FBeyer »

vexed87 wrote:Thanks for the link jacob, I'll leave it open on the laptop for SO to stumble across, planting a subliminal seed of sorts... :lol:
Don't plant seeds, lead by example. I had no luck explaining the idea of decluttering to my SO. As soon as she experienced how much more space we suddenly had after 70 % of my stuff was gone, she was almost onboard as well. She still keeps memorabilia though. I'm very calloused about that, I toss it!

Peanut
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by Peanut »

ffj wrote:@ego

The point I am trying to make is that if people have a choice, the vast majority will choose an abundance. And the reason more people don't live like Americans with our overflowing garages is because they can't afford to do so. Many people of the world are constrained by their lack of finances, not because they don't wish for more material items. Let's be honest about this upfront
Lots of people may not be making choices in their best interests--that's not surprising. Hyper consumerism makes people unhappy, studies have shown. Also poorer than they would be otherwise. And then of course there are the environmental costs, which should arguably matter most to those with kids.

There are also many kinds of abundance. Financial abundance and an abundance of free time are ignored by most people in favor of material abundance, mostly to their detriment.

Peanut
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by Peanut »

The second food clip was really interesting to me.

I forget many people only shop once a week or two, and how popular the Costco-type warehouses are. My theory on bulk buying and stockpiling is that you tend to use more of a thing and more wastefully than you would otherwise. If you have a ton of ice cream bars, they'll be eaten just because they're there. If you bought one box at a time, you'd likely eat then more slowly (saving the last couple for a while) and end up buying less over time (perhaps even reconsidering the wisdom of buying them at all after a while). That's good for your waistline and pocketbook. It's the same with supplies like toilet paper, dishwashing liquid, etc. A few people are vigilant about being efficient with every use, but many will only be that way with the last roll. With supplies Iike these you do save money buying in bulk, I admit.

Personally I just don't like a huge stash of anything in my cabinets. Mostly bare pleases me, although I'm not a <100 minimalist. Maybe <1000

George the original one
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by George the original one »

I've got clutter issues, but I'm still trying to imagine a life where you don't use the backyard...

brighteye
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Re: Stuff --- A cluttered life

Post by brighteye »

After watching the videos I can't wait to get home and get rid of some things, seeing cluttered spaces always has that effect on me. Mostly books I kept because I wanted to re-read before donating them. But I just realised they are a burden (both mentally and physically) and I have no desire to keep them any longer. But also some clothes, and a bunch of wine bottles that friends keep bringing when they visit us.
Being in a cluttered space, I feel I can't think or breathe, it is like my mind is weighed down.

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