Stuff --- A cluttered life

[McTrex]

When my wife asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I said, could you throw three things out....

That's brilliant, I might try this out

[FBeyer]

Most Europeans have a comparable or higher standard of living than we North Americans yet they do not have garages and storage units overflowing with junk that we have...

External storage facilities are starting to bloom on every street corner these days.
We're coming, and it makes me sick to my stomach.

[IlliniDave]

This is a theme that is near and dear to me. I think I've mentioned it several times in my journal. My DX was a hair's breadth short of an all-out hoarder (I think there really is something to the idea that people lean on stuff because they do not know how to find meaning in life). She had so much stuff she wasn't able to take it all when she left. Out of deference to my daughters I've gone about shedding it at a measured pace. I also accumulated a fair amount of clutter myself, and I've used a process similar to the YMOYL technique of rating the effect of your spending habits (there was, not surprisingly, a correlation between sloppy spending and clutter--so the YMOYL exercise also kick-started my deliberate clutter management).

I've gone in stages. The first phase was to clear up spaces and give everything not used daily a "place". Then I started in on streamlining and tidying the storage areas. That is still an ongoing process. At times my diligence flags and I'll go through and do something like set an assignment for myself along the lines of "I'll get rid of 50 things out of the garage this weekend," or some such. We talk about a persons resting heart rate or resting metabolism, but there also seems to be a "resting stress level" for me and it plummets as clutter is removed.

[saving-10-years]

I bought this book when it first came out and was mentioned in this forum (not sure where). So you can tell right there that I am not exactly minimalist (although this is not a book that can be found easily to loan in the UK and I have shared it around). Yes its a record of consumption in the US but UK is not _that_ far behind. Looking at the videos what comes through (more so than in the book) is that in the UK as in the US things are often not stored in any way that you could find them to use at some future date. I realised when DS was young that not all families do things like put the correct DVD back in the correct box and care for things so that they were pass-onable and not simply piles of parts with bits missing or damaged. In the videos there is a lack of respect for the items purchased. They are not cared for or cared about.

If you have children and are adults working full time the time spent acquiring stuff is small (but online this can be hugely 'productive') but the time spent reducing your stuff is rarely available and can be very unproductive - as @GandK says, family members with different needs/agendas. Also tend to agree with @ffj that if you have the space and the need and its stored away and used later there is no clutter problem. Having seen examples of his work on these forums I am assuming that he has very extensive organised and useable uncluttered workspace.

I'm conscious that I am currently using stuff that I stored 30+ years back (specialist fabric/fibre tools and materials). I kept hold of these items because we have space and I knew it would not be easy to find them in the future and I could not think of anyone else who would need them. (With the internet it is now easier to find and dispose of quirky/unusual items but these were set aside in the 1970s and early 1980s). I would not let them go lightly then and until now did not have the time to redistribute them thoughtfully. I probably have the mindset of a curator and its a joy to be able to use and display these legacy items now I have time. Also to pass on to others things that they will use or value.

In the fibre world there is an acronym used to describe those who have lots of fibre (yarn/fleece) - SABLE (stash acquired beyond life expectancy). I'm trying to be very conscious of this for perishables or short term use items but I am less concerned about items which I am caretaking as long as I have room to store them and space to enjoy/use and be inspired by them.

[cmonkey]

Like everything else in life, control your stuff don't let it control you. It serves you and your plan/life. I think this is what it comes down to. We are physical beings living in a physical world and we have many many interests as renaissance folks. So some stuff is necessary. I think its the 'accumulation for accumulations sake' crowd that is the problem.

[vexed87]

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]

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 ) 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]

@vexed87 - http://bemorewithless.com/project-333/

[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]

@vexed87 - http://bemorewithless.com/project-333/

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]

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]

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

[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]

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/

[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!

[jacob]

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

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]

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]

Mismatched & odd shoes:

http://oddshoefinder.com/about

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

[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]

Our bank accounts are too cluttered

If anyone here feels their bank accounts are too stuffy, you can paypal your excess cash clutter to me.

Snort.

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