Researchers: The average U.S. household has 300,000 items

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://articles.latimes.com/2014/mar/21/health/la-he-keeping-stuff-20140322

For many people, gathering possessions is just the stuff of life
The average U.S. household builds up a plethora of stuff, which means that figuring out what to keep and what to discard is no easy matter.

• 

We cherish things and accumulate them. We move them from shelf to shelf, and from home to home. The federal government estimates that a quarter of Americans with two-car garages don't use them for automobiles. Even those without a permanent home carry their stuff around with them.

We like to shop, own, trade or give away. Things matter to us, for reasons practical and emotional.

"Our possessions all have magical qualities. Many, if not most, of the things we keep have an essence that goes beyond the physical character of the object," says Randy Frost, a professor at Smith College, in Northampton, Mass., who has studied and written about hoarding and is the author of "Stuff."

A stroll through the Sunday flea market outside Fairfax High School provides a catalog of some of those magical objects: varsity letter jackets, rotary phones, typewriters, fur blankets, old ties and cowboy boots. Butterflies pinned to cardboard and framed. A crystal Eiffel Tower. A blue guitar.

Vendors collect stuff to sell to people, who often resell the stuff all over again.

"This market has the best eclectic stuff — a collection of people's things that are old," says LaNell Petersen, shopping on a recent weekend with her sisters. She likes the hunt for something she believes is more valuable than its price.

Consider these statistics cited by professional organizer Regina Lark: The average U.S. household has 300,000 things, from paper clips to ironing boards. U.S. children make up 3.7% of children on the planet but have 47% of all toys and children's books.

So why can't we let go? And what are the implications of our reluctance to pare down, our inability to get organized?

The notion that things don't matter is rubbish, the experts say. They matter for many reasons: keeping up with the Joneses, recalling departed loved ones, even objective value — like the 17th century Dutch painting that is among many objects of desire in Donna Tartt's "The Goldfinch."

Our things can give us a sense of security, connection to the past, to the people we love.

"When you go home in the evening after work, you go in your house and you feel comfort because you have your stuff," Frost says.

But that security may be a crutch too, "a sort of public artificial mask," says Andrew Mellen, a professional organizer and author of "Unstuff Your Life." "Full bookshelves say, 'I'm well-read. I have lots of books.' But really, you just buy books. Is your home an accurate external reflection of you?"

Lark had bookcases full of the books she used to earn a doctorate in history. When she downsized to an apartment, she looked at the volumes and came to the conclusion that they represented her accomplishment, her intelligence. As she decided what to keep, "I had to ask myself a lot of questions. Who am I without these books? What will people think of me? Getting rid of them, am I less smart?"

Finally, she passed them on to a younger doctoral student and says she's happier for it.

But there's no single prescription: "One person is happy living in a sparsely furnished yurt," says Gretchen Rubin, who devoted a chapter of her book "Happier at Home" to assessing her possessions, "while another person is happy adding to a collection of fine porcelain. There's no one right way."

"I don't think stuff is inherently wrong or bad," Mellen says, "but if things have become obstacles to your happiness, that's a problem."

Figuring out what to discard and being able to actually toss stuff is crucial to an ordered, happy life, experts say.

"I am impressed by the degree to which outer order controls inner calm," says Rubin. She recalls the friend who told her, "'I cleaned out my fridge, and now I can change careers.'"

Among our keepsake possessions, photos have their own "symbolic weight," prompting people to save even pictures of people they no longer remember, Rubin says.

Eventually many of them end up in the trash — unless Mark Kologi gets his hands on them. For 17 years now, artists in need of inspiration and all sorts of other people have found their way to his flea market stall to root through bins of miscellaneous snapshots, most of which sell for 50 cents apiece. He estimates he's sold millions over the years. "They don't belong in the garbage," he says.

Some have been bought by Luiso Berdejo, who was inspired to make the film "Violet" by one picture. In the film, a young man falls in love with a woman he sees in a photo from that stall and sets out to find her.

As Berdejo talks, another customer encourages a friend to "just reach in and pull one out." You never know where it might lead.

The "two" car garage

I think my kids may have more than this

I wish they were this neat

People jam more of their stuff in the basement

.and then the attic. So much stuff

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/blog/15-stats-show-americans-are-drowning-stuff

Image: Angie/Flickr

Getting kids to clean up after themselves is a rather unpleasant, ongoing struggle for many parents today. If one’s kids are messy, it’s typically assumed that it’s because of a lack of parental will, i.e., that the parents’ failed to discipline their children.

I wouldn’t want to let parents completely off the hook here, but I will say that we often ignore contextual factors that also work against keeping a clean house, such as the busyness of modern life and… the fact that we simply own a lot more stuff than people in the past.

In America, many people spend a good portion of their free time accumulating possessions, and the rest of that time attempting to clean up those same possessions. Those with children spend many frustrating hours trying to coax their children to do the same.

Here are 15 stats gathered by Joshua Becker for Becoming Minimalist that help confirm the suspicion that Americans simply own too much stuff:

1. There are 300,000 items in the average American home (LA Times).

2. The average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years (NPR).

3. And still, 1 out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage—the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades. (New York Times Magazine).

4. While 25% of people with two-car garages don’t have room to park cars inside them and 32% only have room for one vehicle. (U.S. Department of Energy).

5. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks. Currently, there is 7.3 square feet of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation. Thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self storage roofing (SSA).

6. British research found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily (The Telegraph).

7. 3.1% of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally (UCLA).

8. The average American woman owns 30 outfits—one for every day of the month. In 1930, that figure was nine (Forbes).

9. The average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually (Forbes).

10. While the average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing per year (Huffington Post).

11. Some reports indicate we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago (The Story of Stuff).

12. Currently, the 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe account for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent (Worldwatch Institute).

13. Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches ($100 billion) than on higher education (Psychology Today).

14. Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items. The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime. Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list (The Daily Mail).

15. Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential goods—in other words, items they do not need (The Wall Street Journal).

As it has been said: we don’t possess things; they end up possessing us. Again, discipline and consistency on the part of parents are certainly needed when it comes to bringing up tidy children. But just as children become easily overwhelmed by too many toys, so also the same applies when they are confronted with a huge mess and told to “clean up.”

Raising children is difficult enough, and parents probably don’t need clutter working against them in this task. If they want tidy children, it's better if they own less stuff.

The moving truck

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

1 out of 10 Americans rents a self-storage unit

Many people even use them to safely store their summer cars during the snowy winter months because they don't have an empty space available in their garage. (I plead guilty to having done this)