‘The world is too much with us.’ It certainly is. So many of us have more things than we could ever need: clothes we’ve never worn or haven't worn in ages; CDs, cassette tapes, records, games, consoles, phones and miscellaneous cords to tech devices; books we’ve read and won't read again; magazines with articles we’re going to read but actually never get round to; trinkets, ornaments and family heirlooms left behind by past generations; gifts you’ve never liked, board games you no longer play; things that need cleaning or repair before you can use them again; pots, pans, utensils, kit and equipment you just don't use.
You’re not a hoarder – you’re just a normal person with lots of stuff.
Maybe you’ve a stockpile of cleaning and food supplies: cans, jars and packets of food? A freezer jammed full with most of the food staying there week after week, month after month? And in the bathroom – a test lab worth of potions and lotions? Stuff just seems to be piling up: old letters and bills, children's toys, arts and crafts – all on tables and worktops and shoved inside cupboards, wardrobes, sheds and shelves.
Do you think your home is too small or you need more storage space? It's unlikely. What's more likely is that you just have too much stuff. A bigger home and more storage space – cupboards, wardrobes, chests, storage boxes etc – would just give you more reasons to accumulate and keep stuff.
Get stuff. Buy stuff. Keep it. Get more of it. Keep that, too. When did this become normal?
In the past, it appears that most people lived their lives with scarcity. Material goods – clothes, furniture, books, toys etc. – were not only hard to come by, they were expensive. If you could acquire something, you got it and kept hold of it.
But now, in Western countries especially, we live in abundance: things are relatively inexpensive and easy to acquire. Not only do we have a plentiful supply of the things we need and want, we have an unlimited supply and we’re keeping it all; filling our homes and lives. We seem to have dramatically increased the amount of things we own, without really noticing that it was happening.
Having too much stuff is the new normal.
‘Contemporary U.S. households have more possessions per household than any society in global history’, explains Jeanne E. Arnold, Professor of anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2012, Professor Arnold and a team of sociologists and anthropologists published their book, Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century, based on a four-year study of 32 middle-class, dual-income families in Los Angeles.
Three-quarters of the families had stopped using their garages to park their cars. They had too much stuff crammed in ‘to make way for rejected furniture and cascading bins and boxes of mostly forgotten household goods’. The families had enough food to survive all manner of disasters; 47% had second fridges. A few of the families had more TVs than people.
The families gained 30% more possessions with the arrival of each child. But instead of bringing satisfaction and contentment and making the world better, those who regarded their homes as ‘cluttered’ reported feeling stressed by it all. These people weren't on a TV show about hoarding. They were just ‘average’ families.
Yes, all the families were in the US. But is it really that much different in the UK or any other Western country? Back in 2010, British toy manufacturer Dream Town commissioned research to discover what toys children own and regularly play with.
The study found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but parents estimated that their children play with just 12 ‘favourites’ – 5% – on a daily basis. The study of 3000 parents also revealed that more than half thought their children ended up playing with the same toys day in and day out because they had too many to choose from.
They have too much stuff! We have too much stuff! Stuff that takes up space, thought, energy and time or money without providing any real benefit.
Sometimes, it feels like the items on our shelves, in our cupboards, in sheds, lofts and garages manage to reproduce and multiply when our backs are turned.
Is your kitchen so cluttered there's no room to cook? Is the lack of storage in your bathroom driving you crazy? Is your wardrobe bursting at the seams? You think that it's because your home is too small or you don't have enough storage space. Maybe you’ve never once blamed having too much stuff as being the problem.
How do we accumulate so much stuff?
So how do we manage to accumulate so much stuff? Through shopping trips, markets and car boot sales; with online shopping on Amazon, Gumtree and eBay etc. Then there are Christmas and birthday gifts, things we inherit and souvenirs we pick up from our holidays.
Most of our clutter doesn't actually begin its existence as clutter; pretty much all of it started out as something useful, interesting, attractive, enjoyable.
But in time – over the months and years – the things we’ve bought or acquired reach a point where they’re no longer useful, enjoyable etc. Instead of recognizing that we no longer need or like so many of these things, we build and buy more storage – wardrobes, cupboards and shelves, chests and boxes – to store more and more possessions. As someone once said, ‘We’re lost in the noise of our own consumption.’
