Make Room for Less 'Stuff'
I never wanted much
Throughout my life I’ve been pretty lucky; I’ve almost always had food on my plate, a roof over my head & for the most part, good people around.
That’s not to say that there haven’t been things that I wanted, or at least thought I wanted. And that’s kind of what I want to talk about here.
You don’t need it.
’Stuff’ You know, The stuff that you have to cram into your wardrobe to make it fit, the stuff you put in the kitchen drawer & hold on to ‘just in case’ and the stuff you buy to make room for more stuff!
George Carlin makes some great points in this ‘old but gold’ rant
There have been some changes in my life lately that have made me consider what is important. I’ve taken a good look at the things I’ve acquired over the years and I can’t help but wonder how a lot of it got there, or even why I’m still holding on to it - things I used once or twice a few years ago, clothes I never wore & gadgets that I had no real use for…
There wasn’t a lot of this stuff, but I still wondered how and why it got into my life and why I still have it.
Why?
If you look around your home, I’m sure you’ll find that you have quite a few things you don’t use or can’t remember using. But why does this stuff make its way into our homes?
Well, nobody forces us to make purchases or accept these things, but take a look at this ‘fun’ chart that I found relating to relating to Ad spending in the US last year:
Wow. This is just online ad spending, it doesn’t account for TV, print media or other forms of advertising.
It’s a huge industry, designed to sell you the dream.
Sell the sizzle, not the steak. -Elmer Wheeler (1920s)
Advertisers learned long ago that it was more effective to market products on how they could improve your life rather than what they were. I don’t have a problem with advertising as such - it’s great that it creates jobs and if you’ve ever needed something to finish a project, how else might you have found out about what you needed?
The issue, I think, comes from products that seek to fix a problem that never existed:
Just imagine how much better your life will be with this revolutionary new stuff!
Retail therapy is a lie.
Retail therapy is an effective, though potentially expensive, coping mechanism.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/rent/2015/09/03/retail-therapy-does-it-help/
Several coping strategies can be used during stressful periods in our lives, these are the two that I’d like to focus on:
- Adaptive
- Maladaptive
Adaptive mechanisms improve your ability to deal with the stresses and strains, these things include actions like exercise, problem-solving and meditation. These things aid in your ability to deal with what’s going on around you and although it seems like a no-brainer ‘problem-solving’ might be the number one thing that could get you back on track.
These things sound easy and they can be, but to participate in these activities requires some extra effort on your behalf.
Enter Maladaptive strategies
Hey, you know what else you can do to ‘deal’ with all your problems? Deny they exist, drink heavily or become socially withdrawn.
So pretty much the exact opposite to the adaptive strategies, these tend not to deal with the issues rather than allow you to ignore them for a while.
Guess what? They’re super easy to do!
I think ‘Retail Therapy’ is more aligned with maladaptive strategies. A temporary fix, allowing you to feel better for a short period while not addressing the underlying cause of the stress. What is most interesting to me is why drinking isn’t referred to as ’Alcohol therapy’…
Living with less
I’ve been having a clear-out in preparation for moving. I took inventory of the things that I’d accumulated and considered what I needed. I’ve donated a couple of bags full of clothes to charity (there were things I hadn’t worn in over a year, if ever.) I gave away a lot of items to my friends who thought they would find them useful/liked them and now I’m left with what I could easily move in one car journey.
It didn’t feel difficult to do, but it did take some time for me to make the time to do it. Clearing these things out made me feel pretty good, after all - it’s less ‘stuff’ to worry about.
Please don’t misunderstand - I’m not encouraging you to not buy anything, rather, consider whether you or somebody else has convinced you that buying these things will make you happy (hint: They probably won’t. Not for long anyway.)
Header image: Here
All other images have source noted in image.
Love that George Carlin clip, he's a legend.
I noticed that pattern a while ago: new stuff only gets you off for so long until you return to the baseline. So I became much thoughtful of what things should I really get.
Adds are so smart nowadays, because the understanding of human psyche is increasing all the time, and so the strategies to abuse the compulsive side of it have become more influential.
He most certainly is/was.
Ah man, for sure - the sooner you get a handle on this the better, otherwise you end up continually chasing it with new stuff. Consumerism™.
What I find concerning is this:
This was from 2007...
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Yeah, consumerism is very unattractive to me, being a slave to never have enough is not a way to live life.
It's crazy how much young kids are getting exposed and taught into the consuming mentality.
First off, how’re you gonna give your stuff away to friends when I’m sitting right here?! Bet you gave away all your fly English styles, and now I have to consume those products the hard way: e-commerce. Jokes aside, I think you’ve touched on a good point. I could use some room in the office, no doubt. I only recently started discarding objects of low utility. It’s liberating, to say the least.
Haha, I guess for the postage you could probably buy them yourself :D
For sure, feels great to de-clutter. Every time you acknowledge what you don’t need, you appreciate what you do need a little better.
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When i moved to another city kind of far away from where I had been living for 10 years i was kind of amazed at all the "stuff" I had acquired. I actually called it "crap" because I believe there is a real difference between the two. I think i had like 100 t-shirts, 12 pairs of jeans, something crazy like 40 pairs of socks etc. I also had a bunch of furniture and far more cups /plates / silverware than i would ever be capable of using all at once.
When i decided i was moving to another city I determined that my entire life, from this point forward, was going to fit into 2 large suitcases (and a dog carrier.) Now since I live overseas in a country that may change their visa laws at any given time not acquiring furniture is quite a smart move (I think). However, my way of life wouldn't apply to someone who live in, say, USA, where you have to buy your own furniture in most instances.
Furnished houses are very common over here.
Anyway, it has been quite liberating once i decided to not get stuff that I don't need. I downsized my gaming rig to a powerful laptop, and i honestly believe that my life in fact would fit into 2 suitcases at this point. One really big benefit is the fact that moving sucks.....but is sucks a lot less when you only have 2 things (and a dog) to carry. :)
Thanks for sharing your experience. I’m not sure I can get away with not buying furniture, most places here come without but it definitely sounds like it’s working for you :)
That sounds like a really manageable amount of ‘stuff’ to move around!
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yeah, but i do understand that my situation is unique in a way.
There are times that I consider moving back to USA but i know that I am going to have to budget an absolutely huge amount of money to purchase furniture. It's funny how that really isn't a thing in any of the other countries I have lived in.
I suppose i could move back to the states and just buy a mattress and a tv because really , i don't use much else that is in my house. :)
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This has been creeping more forward in my mind the older I get. I've never been much of a hoarder really - every time I moved out during and after uni, i'd have half a dozen bin bags of stuff I just dump without a second thought, whereas my sister still holds on to birthday cards and scraps of this and that from 25 + years ago.
I'm perfectly happy to get rid of the stuff I acquire so then... why do I acquire them in the first place?
Recently a friend showed me he was buying the same phone as me, but the highest-end version of it 'he deserved premium'. 12GB ram. I quickly googled it and found that, if you wanted to run PUBG, the most intensive phone game, and two other high-power games, spotify, at least 4 social media apps, photo editing and a couple of other things all at the same time, you MIGHT need about 6GB of ram to have a smooth experience.
I told him this, but in the 2 minutes it took me to check that, he had already doled out 600 quid for it. Then repeated that he deserved PREMIUM.
Sigh.
I think that’s a good question. Perhaps in the moment they feel worthy of being kept? :shrug: I’d like to get to the bottom of it one day.
You deserve premium too @mobbs. Upgrade today!
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Already bought the prototype model for $4,000
Few people have only the necessary things :)