It's definitely a generational thing and younger folks have never seen a repair and retain society or scarcity that drives that hoarding attitude. And unless they collect or inherit vintage equipment (survivor bias aside) they haven't purchased anything designed to last many years much less decades.
Before anyone accuses me of slagging on Millennials I don't mean it that way. I mean since we have a manufacturing base that is in my opinion far more aggressive about planned obsolescence than 50+ years ago and several generations used to cheap, low quality goods manufactured overseas why would they want or need anything else? We value the novel and inexpensive over the durable.
I disagree; I think it's as much a personal preference as it was in the past. I don't deny that things are not built to be repaired nowadays, but that doesn't mean that everyone in the past was good about self repair. Stuff could be repaired but much of what we collect and hoard isn't that, it's trinkets and decorations. My grandmother, for example, had several rooms in her basement dedicated to Christmas decorations, neverminding the rest of the household items and junk she had collected. It took a few months to clear it because my mother and Aunt wouldnt just give it away.
My mother wasn't quite as bad, but she used to have her own mountain of decorations until I got her to agree to let me get rid of about 75% of it. It's still taking up about 12 or so large plastic storage bins, but it's way less than it had been.
Nowadays we do want durable items even if we are more at leisure to replace them. I am very happy that most of the easy to fail components in my MacBook Air are replaceable (I/O board, fan, battery, SSD) and would love it if other parts were too. Working on computers for as long as I have I know people like to get what they can out of a computer; the number who just go buy a new one when it dies isnt as high as you'd think. Same with other items like phones, cars, etc.
I grew up in the 70s in the U.K. and I always laughed at the way that at Christmas my grandparents (and parents on occasion) would save string from parcels and fold up particularly nice wrapping paper from presents they received.
Of course, now I realise jus how close the Second World War was. If the war had finished in 1997, with rationing continuing until 2007, I too might be loathe to throw things away.
My MIL has not left the 70s and still does this. You can watch the discomfort on her face when she watches my 4yr old girl destroy good wrapping paper, or even rip open an envelope instead of saving it for re-use.
I save all the padded envelopes and never get to reuse them because apparently I don't send enough random stuff. And I was born in the 80s and there's no obvious reason.
Moreover, we see the same thing today with digital items. (Well, to be honest, we already saw this 20 years ago with digital items.)
There, it is just not so visible because disk space is ever increasing as well as getting cheaper.
In the days of Napster, people collected gigabytes of music just to have it - at some point this was more minutes than they could ever listen to in a life span.
Few people actually care to collect that stuff in order to make it accessible to more people. For example, the people at archive.org, as well as many libraries, are doing a great job.
But the majority of collectors collect only for their own, usually with an unwieldy directory structures and meaningless file names (track1, track2, ...). They won't ever find anything they search for. It's often faster to search & buy those via Internet. Same with movies.
It is even worse with personal photographs and videos. The same way some people have loads of paper photographs around, other have disks full of digital photographs. 200+ photographs per day of vacation are not uncommon. Who will ever look at those?
Reducing those to the "best" 10-20 items already feels like an imposition to most. Reducing those further to 1 photograph to summarize the vacation is considered extremist by most. And even then, they will just mark the best photos, but won't delete anything except for the most blurred garbage photos.
Even more strangely, some people do feel the urge to clean up their mess, but as with physical items, deleting loads of digital items takes a lot of time for them. This is the next round of absurdity: They would rather spend a weekend (or full week) on finishing their photo/video archive than to go out for another trip.
You'd be surprised how little music "gigabytes" is. 8 years ago my friend once decided to listen to every song in his music library in order, only took him 2 months.
I have thousands of albums in my google play account, go through spurts of adding more, and constantly listen to the whole collection on shuffle. It shows how many times each song has been listened to, it's rare for me to ever see a song without at least one play.
Good point for music, but if you add podcasts, youtube clips, movies and serials to this list, you quickly have mutiple terabytes that you can't ever consume in a healthy way.
(And playing it on a TV screen in the background while doing computer/tablet/smartphone stuff is not what I would consider "healthy" consumption, because then it is more a source of noise than anything else. You can't really enjoy it and miss most of the movie.)
Ah, this makes sense. Maybe its a generational thing but I notice my parents do love their trinkets/mementos. They are avid travelers and try to get something from wherever they visit. When I visit new places, my memory of the place is mostly: photos on instagram and facebook.
We also value space and time differently because it is so damn expensive. The things you own, own you in many ways, so reducing them increases living space, and time which are both in short supply.
Trinkets mean storage or displaying and dusting. Current generations are already going through a stage of ditching video, CD and DVD storage, and potentially book shelves too.
Being apart of the generation that you would expect to mostly share memories via insta or FB, I actually can't stand the idea...it's mostly my friends who do this & tag me in the the photo's.
I'm very much in the memento way of things, doesn't have to be related & for me at least it can be quite literally anything. I won't grab something for each place I go to but rather something that can define the whole trip. That's done, more subconsciously. Normally it's a wrist band (I tend to go to more festivals than day's out/traditional holidays) but I'll pick up anything, that last break I took was down to Cornwall & have picked up the smallest of pebbles but it's very particular to the geology in the area. Which to me say's a lot about the whole trip & the time it took place.
For me it's about practicality. I don't have space in my 600sqft 2 bed apartment, for the two dining tables, 4 double beds, 3 sets of tableware, 2 living room suites that my parents have in their 4 bed detached 1800sqft house, and I can't afford the space that they have because they bought it in the 80s.
In my experience its also a lack of a permanent home. Stuff becomes a liability when your landlord can kick out at short notice, or you are living in a tiny apartment.
I think it has very little to do with durability and a lot to do with the relative prices of manufactured goods versus real estate.
It's very easy for the floor space consumed by an object to exceed its value. Especially if you're renting, in which case you could probably assign an actual monthly monetary cost to keeping every single object in your flat.
Life is not that long either, and being an experience generation, there is a palpable opportunity cost to accumulating stuff you don't want. Just walking by an overcrowded garage or basement reminds you of the time it will take to deal with it, time that you could be using for a trip or something else stimulating.
> a palpable opportunity cost to accumulating stuff you don't want
Absolutely, it can be a real burden. Especially if it requires any kind of cleaning or maintenance.
Conversely the time cost of acquiring stuff has collapsed. You don't have to buy or hang onto stuff in advance of possibly requiring it if you can have it same-day shipped from Amazon.
The time it takes to "deal with it" has gone up quite a bit, too. When I was a kid the trash guys would haul anything away that was less than four feet wide. All kinds of furniture, beds, electronics, used paint... whatever. It all went into the same truck.
Now half the stuff you buy is toxic waste when you go to get rid of it. You have to make special trips to the place that collects paint, for instance, which isn't the same place as electronics. There are all sorts of projects my parents would have done without a second thought that I'll pass on because I don't want to spend all that time getting rid of stuff.
In the context of this article I'm not sure if it has so much to do with repair and retain as opposed to simply not wanting to own a bunch of stuff that will take up space and never get used. Fine china, silverware, crystal, etc.
I've always been annoyed by "fine China". If something is so fragile that it can't be used, then it is worthless to me.
On the flip side, it's kind of interesting that products made in china are now synonymous with "cheap crap", while at one time we held finely made, fragile cups from China on display in our homes.
Fine china of the generation we're talking about here is typically made in Europe - the fine bone china my grandmother owns was made in England. China in this context refers to porcelain, using techniques learned from China.
Fine china is fun. There is an endless and very cheap supply of these things on the fleamarket, so one can use them with abandon. If they break, just get more.
This is my opinion too. You can eat off great china for next to nothing.
Low-end auction houses are also great places to pick up whole sets on the cheap. At the very worst these are a lot more interesting than plain white junk.
I agree. I'm in this demographic, and it drives me crazy to have stuff sitting around that's not being used. My wife and I don't typically decorate with this kind of stuff either. We were /strongly/ encouraged to put things like crystal on our wedding registry. It sits in a cabinet unused. On the other hand, we also registered for earthenware type dishes, and we use the hell out of those. They are nice looking, durable, and extremely useful. Not "unitaskers" So glad we don't have fine china on top of that.
To me it seems more wasteful to have junk taking up room in your living space. Living with less is desirable.
Less formality, yes. You don't need $60 plates to host a dinner party when a $2 plate will do just fine. Plus, you don't need to worry about accidentally breaking one.
When the grandmother of $SO moved into an assisted living facility, we got pick some of her stuff, too.
We only took the silver cutlery and use it as every day.
There is just no need and space to waste for stuff that is kept out of usage, especially with something like silver cutlery which doesn't degrade by usage and even stays shiny if you use it constantly.
I'm one of the oldest millennials and my parents won't be dying for another 20-30 years unless shit happens, so you may be apologetic to the wrong generation.
I think this trend will actually change with us, my parents have loads of stuff that I'd like, and I've build half my furniture myself, and regularly fix things rather than buy new ones, despite not being handy at all, with YouTube teaching me how. The other half is things I've inherited from my grand parents. Not because I liked it, at first anyway, but because I don't really want to own something with a CO2 footprint leading all over the world or things were build by slave labour.
Besides, the quality and detail in old hand made stuff is so much better than the shitty gluewood you buy in ikea.
Of course that's just my view on things based on myself and my circle of friends, who are strikingly similar to me when I think about it, and we could simply be odd millennials.
Pretty understandable to throw away the past and make it anew. Unfortunately unless you understand that the exercise is just that: exercise, and that there is nothing truly new under the sun you misplace your importance and priorities. Learn from other peoples mistakes and don't fix what isn't broken. If these two precepts were persistent there would be constant advancement.
As far as your concepts go on C02 and inherited guilt..grow up.
'If true that's terrible!'
Why don't you research what you believe and get
to the bottom of the issue(s)? Why don't you at least
look at what the economic factors involved imply contra
the 'objective' science and take a look at how the
pendulum swings. Yes, there is climate change, yes we are involved. But this type of emotional outcry based on taught
thought is stupid.
My parents' entire generation seem to think the same thing, but I don't buy the "scarcity" argument. I don't think it was ever true. Planned obsolescence was a concept pioneered (and coined) by those very generations. From its beginnings in the depression-era auto market to its peak in the fashion driven 1950s with cars designed to last three years or so.
Fashion-driven, low-quality overpriced US cars left the market wide open for cheap, high-quality foreign imports in the 1970s - and forced US manufacturers to significantly increase quality. That's pretty much the opposite of the story you're telling.
Instead I see a society which had a post-WWII manufacturing abundance just binging on material goods to the point that they were buried in stuff in a way that has never really happened before and people don't have good mechanisms for dealing with. At least not until they realise that "stuff" is the problem.
Both my parents and grandparents would claim that they bought stuff that lasted but they just bought the trendy items of the 1950s and 1980s respectively, and 90% of it went in the trash years ago.
That is true. I see it also on how my parents act with leftovers. If I have leftover food of certain things, I tend to throw it away and rather buy fresh. I am throwing it also sometimes away because I know for sure now that I won't eat it in the future.
On the other hand, my parents put away all leftovers and eventually also eat it. It is pretty similar with many other every-day things.
I just lived with my parents for a few weeks after living abroad for 5 years and noticed how they have kept so many things that I have seen when I was a child. I am not even talking about 1 or 2 things, but many (or most) things.
> If I have leftover food of certain things, I tend to throw it away and rather buy fresh.
I find it difficult to appreciate this viewpoint. There's a certain elegance in using your resources efficiently and not wasting things. I find it significantly more satisfying to find a use for things rather than discarding them. This also applies to possessions, and more abstract things like writing code and not wasting lines of code or memory, or writing and not wasting words.
I'm kind of surprised that some people don't eat leftovers. While it's understandable from a taste perspective the time required to cooking fresh food every day, assuming you cook most meals, seems staggering.
I agree to focus most on the meat, mainly because it takes 10x the resources per pound to produce compared to vegetables, so it's the most valuable resource.
It gives me a warm feeling to hear advice like that being taken to heart. I would like to say that I always do the same, but I know that this will stick in my mind.
Anything spicy improves with a little time, and I've found the same to be true with tomato sauce and cooked cheese - so curries, chillies, lasagna etc etc all improve. soup is often better the next day too.
Using left overs is a way to cook more complex meals!
If you enjoy handling food then learning about handling left overs is a big part of that. If you go back and look at weekly food schedules from the past you will see patterns, were people cook one type of food day one to have base or ingredient for the next few days of cooking.
My comment was not so much about leftovers as it was about the time it takes to cook. And while I certainly do use the leftovers I end up with, I also try cook in such a way that it minimizes leftovers.
How is it morally wrong to throw away something I know I'm not going to finish? What am I supposed to do with it? I can't buy smaller sizes. It would be morally wrong if I bought 5 loafs of bread and threw out 4. Then I agree.
The morally wrong part is with not finishing it later. Stick it in the fridge and eat it for lunch or evening snack next day. Or make a meal which includes the leftovers as ingredients (leftover pasta sauce goes as pizza topping, and so on)
It obviously depends on the circumstances. I am more talking about the pattern of wasting, than accidentally wasting food now and then.
This happens at our family gatherings all the time. Our day-to-day consumption habits are a lot healthier than our "treat ourselves at a family gathering" food selection.
At the end of the gathering, everyone "fights" (politely, but very insistently) not to be the ones to take it home, 'cause they'll be forced to not let it go to waste.
I usually throw these because I don't mind binning unhealthy food I can easily replace rather than further harming my health. The latter is a far more useful and expensive acquisition than a quarter-pound of $25/lb cheese.
It's more that if you use the rest of the food the next day, you will consume less new food the next day, and thus consume less resources, and a little less resources is spent on food production.
A staggering 50% of the food produced is wasted somewhere along the line. If you look at moving towards a sustainable society, food waste is actually a huge sub-problem of that, which has to be solved at some point, instead of cutting down ever more rainforest every year etc. etc. to sustain the current wasteful lifestyle.
Our parent generation didn't waste food, and the next generation will probably not be able to either (simply from rising prices).
In a world that sustainably generated enough food for everyone, it would not be wrong to throw away food. It might be that we can get there. Food production today is not sustainable, so at least let's not waste it.
If you press me, yes, I'm sure there's an element of "it's in bad taste" there too that made me react so strongly (it's similar to how rich kids pour out good champagne on the floor to display their wealth). That's closer to your suggestion.
I was ramen poor for a year or so after moving countries on my own as a teenager. Since then I must eat everything I make. My parent's generation will often leave food on their plate to show that they can afford to do that, so I guess it goes around in circles.
I own a Sony radio that is probably 15 years old... It's been around for greater than 60% of my life. My laptop is three years old. My TV is 5 years old (and I have no plans on replacing it anytime soon). The reason I don't have much stuff is because I'm diligent to get rid of things I don't use anymore like old books, charging adapters, electronics etc. Some millennials may be buying cheap novel stuff, but many of us are opting to only have a few quality things we use frequently.
Aye. My Rotel system + Infinity speakers are ~20 years old, and even does beautiful 5.1 multichannel through the HTPC after finding a DB25 to RCA cable with my Asus Xonar Deluxe soundcard. I had to replace the baffles on the Infinity speakers after the first decade; sound is just as good if not better than when I bought the system (thanks to that Xonar card).
A few months ago our 11 year old Nilfisk vacuum cleaner broke down. Back then it was about A$450. Instead of buying an equivalent new one for ~A$700 or so, I repaired it for ~A$250. I figured it'd still be better than buying a new $200-300 vacuum every 2-3 years.
Sometimes buying expensive stuff is the cheaper option.
I love stuff that's durable and repairable, but it's so hard to come by these days. And even things that are theoretically repairable often aren't worth doing so (e.g. refrigerators).
I have Oneida flatware, solid wood furniture, and a Blendtec blender because these things will last. I don't want to buy flatware ever again, and, because I bought quality the first time, I won't have to, and I wish there were more things I could buy for life.
I grew up in a postsocialist country so I think I did experience a repair and retain society of scarcity at least in my childhood[1] and through strong cultural tradition later. But you know what? I just don't have room to repair and retain stuff. I have to throw things away when I buy new and better things. I'm cash rich and space poor. It is often cheaper to throw things away and buy again later. Or better still, rent stuff you don't need often.
[1] when I was a kid we'd go shopping in Italy or Austria because so many things/brands (clothes, toys, food, everything really) simply weren't available at home or were significantly cheaper across the border. We would also repair eeeverything for as long as we could and take extra care to treat things nicely so they wouldn't wear or break.
I think this has a lot more to do with depression/WWII era children having been brought up not to waste anything. That leads to the garage fulls of stuff that just can't be thrown away / donated. This was all reinforced during the 1970s/1970s era recessions. Both my parents are part hoarder and have basements / garages full of stuff.
It's definitely a generational thing and younger folks have never seen a repair and retain society or scarcity that drives that hoarding attitude
At the point that the fountain of artificially cheap consumer goods from China dries up, they are in for a rude awakening. Suddenly quality items made to last by local craftsmen won't seem so old-fashioned!
I have a number of things that were made back when repairing was the norm. Unfortunately, I know now if it were to break I wouldn't be able to find a repairman who knew what to do with it for any price I could afford. It'll become cheaper to buy throwaway stuff since the bills for repair are high (or more likely, I'll hoard the stuff until I can save up enough for the repair - but this is difficult when I don't have my own permanent place to live).
Unfortunately this is a problem that perpetuates itself. As more people buy the throwaway goods, repairmen see business dry up, and become rarer. The ones left are expensive.
Quality items made to last by local craftsmen sound great! As long as there's any craftsmen left by the time people turn to them for business.
> We value the novel and inexpensive over the durable.
That's what we're sold, it doesn't mean it's what we value. If there was an easy way to tell durability at time of purchase, I think the trend would shift very quickly.
It is true that culling the volume of things owned by parents can be a nightmare. I had to do this for my grandmother years ago and am starting to help parents with the same. It is amazing to me the volume of things they have held onto all these years for no discernible reason.
Years ago I committed to reducing the clutter in my life. It was such a pivotal moment. It was no longer necessary to move things from here to there in order to put up Christmas decorations, etc. I do think that overall we see value in things that truly have no monetary value all while keeping this item of "value" in the attic or in a box without seeing the light of day for decades. Things take a great deal of time and energy and for me personally, there seemed to be a connection between a disorganized living space with a disorganized mind/life. I cleaned all of that up and found I had better health, had time for the things I enjoy most in life, and was far happier than I would have imagined by having "less."
>there seemed to be a connection between a disorganized living space with a disorganized mind/life. I cleaned all of that up and found I had better health, had time for the things I enjoy most in life, and was far happier than I would have imagined by having "less."
I agree and think this concept is ancient, evidenced by the concept of spring cleaning and the idea of-not necessarily the quote - "cleanliness is next to godliness".
If we're going to put this kind of stock in cultural perceptions we should consider also the converse: the long-standing association of disorderliness with inspiration, creativity, and genius.
I think we can both agree genius is the exception to the rule, not all geniuses are disorderly and rather geniuses can function highly or even thrive in environments where people of average ability can not, but in no way does disorderliness create geniuses.
OK, exclude genius from my statement. Let just limit it to creativity and inspiration. Messy business.
Of course, my real point is that both connections are tenuous and reductive. It's a fun bit of pop psychology, but I doubt either is actually true in general.
Came to a similar epiphany when I had to move out on short notice. Since then I follow what I call the "1 suit case philosophy" - If I can't fit all my stuff into one standard size suit case and fly, then I have too much stuff.
That's fine if you don't have any interests that involve the physical world.
My tool cabinet has about $4000 in tools at this point, many motorcycle-specific ordered from abroad and not easily borrowed or bought at short notice.
It's nice to see I'm not the only person in the thread thinking this. I have an unwieldy subset of items that belong in the "do this often enough that renting is cost prohibitive, and you can't digitize Physical Hobby X."
Board games my wife and I enjoy sharing; my archery equipment; snorkel and dry bag; guitar, etc. As it is, it's a good thing my dad was a tool junky (and master craftsman), so he didn't mind my storing all my woodworking and hobby electronics gear in his garage.
Yeah, if my only occupations were programming and media consumption, it would be a lot easier to live out of a suitcase, but physical activities are kind of amazing.
so you're sleeping on the floor, do sports in your work clothing and always eat out? they'd sure as hell wouldn't allow you to back your kitchen knives after all. or any of your cooking utensils for that matter.
a tv for gaming/television is also out of the question, they'd never let you take that along in your suitcase.
doesn't sound like a life i'd like to be honest.
in all seriousness, its perfectly fine to have stuff. just ask yourself before you buy it, wherever you'll still be using it in ~12 month or so. otherwise, its probably just a fad you shouldn't spent money on.
I do the same as parent poster. Everything I own fits into a single large suitcase so I can just wake up one day and decide to buy a ticket to country X and fly.
I have always rented serviced apartments so the bed sheets, cutlery and other equipment is always in the flat I rent so I use that.
My sports clothes and other hobby equipment also fits into the single suitcase. I keep my clothes collection quite small, if I am not wearing something for a year I will throw it away or give to charity.
You'd be surprised how useful it is to have all your stuff fit into single big suitcase if you love traveling around the world. It's very easy for me to travel or to move around the world for work.
I had to help my sister move apartment recently and I was shocked by the massive amount of stuff she owns. So many suitcases and bags, we had to rent a big van to move it all. I don't get it.
To each their own. Some people want yards, pets, kids, and non-digital hobbies. All of these things lead to an accumulation of stuff and less flexibility in travel. I enjoy my cats, growing some of my own food, and hobbies with bulky items (snowboards, bikes, fishing poles, snowshoes).
Yes, let's say you change job every two years and each time it's in different state/country (sometimes across continents). Then you are better off if you are a minimalist and haven't accumulated much stuff.
I interpret it has fitting everything you want to take with you in a suitcase. Furniture, larger kitchen utensils etc. you can sell/donate/leave behind and get new when you arrive at your next place.
And why won't they let you take you kitchen knives on a plane? I fly with kitchen knives all the time.
Damn, I played the flute, and switched to double bass. ;) The problem is that my town needs roughly 2 or 3 professional flutists, but every band needs a bassist.
Most serviced apartments have all of those (well except lawn mower obviously). So just rent serviced apartment wherever you are living/working at the moment and you can easily have all your stuff fit into one suitcase.
There's a premium, yes. But I think it's a good deal as you don't have to buy any of those things yourself (sunken cost) and you can keep a very high job mobility / flexibility.
This will help you move after better jobs easily and whatever premium you pay you will make back by having better jobs and higher salary imho.
Job mobility is very undervalued these days. I think it's a very strong job negotiation tactic to be so mobile as you have many options to choose from for work as it's so easy for you to move.
My job mobility is hampered anyway by having to pull my wife & kids from their own lives, when I was single I didn't own much more than that but still I think after a few years you'd recoup the expense of buying and selling furniture/appliances.
Most people don't move all that often after their 20s or early 30s (even without a family).
Oh yes I agree. Once you have wife & kids obviously you will settle down in one place and then it makes sense to buy your own appliances and furniture as it's better value long term.
But I am single and right now exactly in the 20s/early 30s part of my life so I find the mobility I gain from owning very minimal inventory of things great.
I have lived and worked in 4 different countries since 2010 and it was great to get to work in different places/cultures and experience life abroad. Obviously eventually I will settle down somewhere.
That's true. Although if you are moving across continents I imagine moving all your furniture and appliances would be a major headache. If you can get all your stuff packed into a suitcase that process would be much simpler. Which means you are de facto more mobile.
I agree. But it's useful to adhere to this philosophy while single. It improves your job mobility a lot.
If you can tell your potential employer that you can fly to country X any time as you just put all your things into a single suitcase, it makes it much easier to relocate for jobs around the world.
Once you settle down and have family / children, obviously you will probably stop moving around and probably stay in a single place for a long time and only move once in a decade or so.
Yes it is. But I think it's easier to do that while you are in your 20s. Older you get the more difficult it becomes to leave your social circle and friends behind.
You move to a 2 suitcase per person philosophy, but I think it’s still a valuable approach.
Even if you keep around some stuff that are not vital but ‘nice to have’, maintaining a restricted set of things that are enough to live your life if the whole family had to move without notice helps for peace of mind.
If you truly embrace that philosophy you will not be able to marry someone who does not also follow it. It's like a religion and your SO's things will be a daily affront to it.
let's see - hiking with various camping equipment for all seasons, mountaineering/alpinism, climbing + via ferratas, skiing, ski touring with avalanche safety stuff, biking, paragliding, diving, running/gym and so on and on. Do you know for example how big winter sleeping bags are? And you can't store them compressed. Or paraglide wing with harness.
And this is just hobbies/passions. Stuff you mostly don't want to rent for many reasons. Good luck fitting a bike or few pairs of skis in some suitcases :) It is true I have more sport stuff than all the rest combined (non-sport clothing, electronics, kitchen, just all the other stuff).
I've been through phase in life where I could fit all my stuff into 1 small room and still live&sleep in it. Great times, but I wouldn't go back, for many reasons.
What you propose sounds boring/empty life, or very expensive and yet subpar experience on many levels (renting everything all the time).
I wish that's the case for me but can't with kids and wife. Looking around though, most of the stuff I use daily will fit in a suitcase, except for 2 monitors.
>I do think that overall we see value in things that truly have no monetary value all while keeping this item of "value" in the attic or in a box without seeing the light of day for decades. Things take a great deal of time and energy and for me personally, there seemed to be a connection between a disorganized living space with a disorganized mind/life. I cleaned all of that up and found I had better health, had time for the things I enjoy most in life, and was far happier than I would have imagined by having "less."
I don't quite see how an item lying in an attic would make you unhappy.
You are mentally holding on to those things in the attic, whether you consciously realize it or not. It occupies passing thoughts, and when you want to do something, it becomes one of the chains in a long chain of shit-that-needs-to-get-done. "I can't go an visit my mother because she'll want to go swimming, my bathing suit is in the attic under all my old hockey gear, and if I have to move the gear, then I'm just going to donate it. Well, donating it requires a trip to the thrift store, which is closed today. I guess I won't visit my mother". (In software development, we call this process "yak shaving").
An item lying in an attic saps energy from you, often when you least expect it. So yeah, it can make you unhappy.
> It is true that culling the volume of things owned by parents can be a nightmare.
I recommend giving everything to a charitable organisation. They'll know what to do with all the stuff. Where I live, they'd come with their truck and take everything.
I don't know how it is in the US, but for me in the UK part of this is space in the house.
I make more money than my parents ever did, and I didn't move into a ridiculously overpriced city, but there's no way I'll ever own a house as large as they did.
I remember growing up in a variety of houses that had, get this, a dining room that wasn't just a table in the kitchen, a living room, and another room that was just kept neat and tidy for visitors. A whole room in the house on the ground floor, used only a couple of times a month. It was a big room too. Enough space for a half-dozen people to sit down. The amount of space my parents had in their houses is just amazing in retrospect. Of course, in a number of countries that's still pretty standard. Like having a place to put a washing machine and associated; us suckers in the UK think it's normal to put that lot in the kitchen, jammed in with the tiny cupboards. I mean, my parents had a dryer AND a chest freezer just kept out in another room. Well, my future sure looks a lot more depressing now that I've thought about this :)
The house I live in now was half the size and had a family with 5 kids living in it originally (Old school neighbours informed me)
I share it only with my wife and now it's in a big city with facilities (Back then they were rural) and it's the smallest house of all my friends.
Did your parents live in a city the size you currently live in, the same distance out from the entertainment district? Same hospital access, same standard of schooling etc?
I have no idea of your case but people often forget how little their parents/grandparents really had compared to what we've come to expect.
Looked up the last one I could remember the address of; looks like it would go for about 15 to 20 times the median UK full-time salary today. Between them, when they bought it, they probably made about three times the median UK full-time salary of the day (so about 50% more than average - well off but not rich). It's not anywhere special; it's just in a town.
Space was cheap when my parents were buying; I don't think there's any doubt abut that.
I came to a realisation that much of what our society is about is focused on getting people to buy more stuff.
I don't want it. Minimise the stuff.
edit: I'm still surrounded by piles of it. Getting rid of stuff is hard. There's a sense of "value" attached to stuff even if you'd never miss it if you never saw it again.
I totally appreciate that there are a lot of people who want to reduce the amount of stuff they have, and feel that our consumer society leads them down a path they don't want to be on.
I am getting a bit sick and tired, however, of this refrain that everyone needs to be a minimalist. I like my stuff. I try not to be a hoarder, but I like buying things and having things, and I don't feel guilty about it.
My personal tastes are for practical things, I don't have anything decorative that I care about, but I do love the 'toys' that I have. I like my metal working tools, my woodworking tools, my 3D printer, and all of the stuff in my workshop because I like making things. I enjoy buying things to make my hobbies more enjoyable.
I like my RC helicopters, even though I rarely get to fly them at the moment. I like my old video game consoles, so I can satisfy my nostalgia when I want to. I might not play them more than once every few years, but I am glad I have them. I look forward to sharing them with my daughter some day when she is old enough to play.
I like having all my old legos and erector sets, and look forward to sharing them with my daughter as well.
I don't feel 'cluttered' by my stuff. I have a good organization system, and they don't interfere with my day to day life. What is the harm in having a box of legos in the closet?
Everyone is entitled to live how they want, but don't act like I am a bad person because I like having stuff.
> I like my metal working tools, my woodworking tools, my 3D printer, and all of the stuff in my workshop because I like making things. I enjoy buying things to make my hobbies more enjoyable.
All the other makers here will understand that sentiment. Tools take up space, but having the ability to actually make and repair things without having to rely on some shared makerspace or workshop is mentally so fulfilling, not to mention economical if you consider not having to rely on contractors and handymen so much for the basic upkeep of your house.
This year I used my amateur woodworking skills to build a wall-to-wall (390cm/12'9"), floor-to-ceiling (270cm/8'10") bookcase in our home. It is filled with books my girlfriend and I have read, still have to read, want to reread at some point, or want to share with others. Collecting and reading books is our material vice. Some people love it, most people wonder why we don't just buy two e-readers (philistines…).
I once made a comment like this to my father. His response was: "that feeling is a luxury of having grown up with a plentitude of stuff". And I think he's got a point. It's really easy to get rid of stuff if you know that you can replace it (or at least replace its function). If you travel to places where "stuff" is not plentiful, people cherish their belongings (stuff) more
100% the truth. My family had below-average income and all I sought to do was augment my life with stuff through my early 20's. As I've grown older I totally understand that it didn't make me happy (quite the opposite), but that realization doesn't set in until you've had the stuff in the first place. I saw much the same pattern with other poor kids I grew up with who went on to make good money.
This is overgeneralizing par excellence. For a counterexample, I grew up with not very much money and now make good money, and I'm far _less_ into getting and having stuff than all of my born-rich friends. My slight tendency to hoard is more than balanced out by the fact that I don't feel nearly the need to or comfort with acquiring unnecessary things that all my friends do.
Put of interest, what do you hoard? I'm similar - I don't spend much money, but I do (at times) find myself surrounded by crap or tools or the detritus of 'hobbies' that I tired of. Had another clear out lately and feeling great for it, though likely need another round or two...
> His response was: "that feeling is a luxury of having grown up with a plentitude of stuff".
This is definitely untrue. That may be the case for _some_ people, but to reduce that feeling to only growing up with plenty is overly reductive. I didn't grow up in a family with much money, and I make a very comfortable living now. My early 20s definitely had a bit of a hoarder tendency from my childhood, but much more importantly, I never got in the habit of _acquiring_ things the way my friends seem to have. I've managed to get over the instinct to keep things unnecessarily and I'm a more comfortable selling/donating (or rarely, disposing of) things I don't need anymore.
It's far easier to believe that there's a generational cultural difference regarding attitudes towards decluttering than it is to make the facile assumption that wanting less stuff is a consequence of living in abundance.
True, but for me, part of the same feeling is tied up in a sense that I might not have money later and I shouldn't count on my current 'wealth' for ever. Don't get me wrong, this isn't some crippling overbearing panic, but it is generally at the back of my mind when thinking of stuff or money.
I'm hoping that this feeling will enable me to either retire a little earlier - as I've saved well, or set up my own business one day - but then again, the risk of my own business! Argh ;)
That's also because most of us live in cities nowadays and you can access to "stuff" you need outside of your place pretty much anytime, anywhere, therefore there is no need for you to build inventory anymore at home. But if you were living far from everything, you'd definitely want to possess things.
The trend happened for a reason. Suburbs aren't as interesting as they were in the 80s--no one wants a big ol empty palace in the middle of nowhere since technology is what gives us space now.
There is a distinct difference between a big ol empty place in the middle of nowhere and a place suitable to raise kids. Even those who want to buy and start a family would do so closer in than in the middle of nowhere. That wasn't the case 30-40 years ago.
A few years ago I took a job 4000km away, and I got rid of everything in my apartment. As I boarded my departure flight, I was carrying everything I owned in a backpack and carryon suitcase. I didn't even have checked luggage, and I didn't even own a pair of pants (wore sweatpants on the flight). It was a great feeling.
I was fortunate enough to do something like this as well. It started with leaving a bad life situation and moving westward across the US to Seattle with everything I owned in the back of a 95' Honda Accord. Then a few years later it became everything I important I own in one box sent to a friend to sit in a closet and the rest in a small suitcase and a duffle bag.
Both times were escapes to something better and the first time I had stressed greatly about "what am I going to do with all this stuff?". Actually getting rid of the stuff was a real relief, and now I wonder why I kept most of it and moved it so many times.
bit OT but I was really disappointed by that documentary. It's a completely uncritical surface level look at the ideas. Was really expecting something a bit more developed.
Then I realized that the two who are interviewed for it were in fact the ones making the documentary, so it has a whole infomercial feel to it.
Totally. I felt the same way and couldn't watch it past the 15 minute mark. Those 2 guys were mostly talking about their own lives and marketing their minimalist site (not I won't link to it here :)
I don't really see this mentioned by anyone, but mobility is also a big factor. There are a lot of people who no longer live anywhere near where they grew up or where their parents or extended family live now. Great solid furniture (or anything 2+ states away from your home) is expensive to move. My parents may have a great desk that I'd love to have someday - but probably not if it means I have to arrange to ship it from Arizona to Chicago and wonder if it's still going to be so great after the stresses of moving. I still have some of the things they left behind when they moved like the head and foot boards for my childhood bed - taking up space in the garage, maybe to be useful if having kids had been part of my lot in life. As it is, they'll end up in the trash when I get around to cleaning the garage or move.
A lot of the place in the world for family heirlooms went the way of the family homestead.
Always check to see if a place near you will accept furniture items as a donation. (Goodwill, Salvation Army, etc.) If nothing else you get a tax credit for the donation.
I was a minimalist before it was cool. But I'm also wabi sabi. I would rather have something used. Not only do you get more for your money, but the history gives it character. That being said, it has to be well made and my style.
So I probably don't want my parents' curtains, but I will see about their table, dresser, old household tools like scissors, etc. A recent visit to a restaurant decorated in a style called rustic chic has me rethinking even my narrow style requirements. I used to be zen minimalist. Like my silverware has no engraving, it's flat and plain. But the restaurant had these old plates, forks, and knives. None of them matched but there was an overall similar style, and they were probably expensive when they were new. So I might consider my parents' old china or crystal, but instead of locking it away I would try to use it every day.
And books and photographs can be shelved or wall-mounted, taking up negligible volume --- up to a point, but still I would have hard time parting with even a single old photo.
I absolutely hate how older folks seem to covet things they're sentimental about. Lock it in a box or display case and never make it a part of your life. Fuck that - when I inherit the things that remind me of my mom or dad I'm going to use them until they become useless. I will love them for their use, and not treat them like something to be kept on a shelf or in a locked safe.
I'm going to keep my dining room table laid out nice like it's Christmas Dinner everyday and I will not cry over the stains that accumulate.
The sad irony is when I inherit my parents' nice things I will then be putting my parents in a box.
I hounded an old roommate of mine that moved out with my scissors. Inherited from my father they were rough looking and probably better described as shears but they kept an edge like nothing else and cut without effort.
I like to believe I hounded my old roomie until he gave them back because I couldnt readily replace them even at the hardware store. But mostly I think it is because he took my fathers scissors and that peeved me good. :)
Minimalism isn't about having the least amount of stuff possible. It is about only having stuff that you need or deeply care about. Books can be one of those things. So is art. Or specialist tools.
I like to put all my photos on Google Photos. That way I don't have to store them in my house.
I would love to use a Kindle for all my reading, but physical books are still more pleasurable to read. It makes it hard for me to part with some books for now. Though some books are only worth reading once and I am happy to give them away after finishing them.
Which is a good point. Going through some of my grandparents' photo collections is always very interesting and enriching. In fact, every time I've sorted through ancient photos there was always at least one that I was glad to have found.
I moved to a house this month. First time in a house since I was at my family's home. I had a twilight zone moment last week when I realised that literally nobody else on my street uses their garage to store their car. Every garage is just full of stuff. How do you accumulate that much stuff that you need what's essentially a storage locker at your home?
When I was younger I had a moment where I was sick of my computer cable hoarding. Every device gives you cables and you never know which one of your ball of 200 you're going to need. I eventually concluded that re-buying things is cheaper than the cost to my happiness by having to store these things forever, not knowing which you'll actually need.
OK, this is a very specific point to comment on, but - I'd disagree with you about the computer cables.
I occasionally get annoyed by my Big Box Of Cables: I used to work in digital filmmaking, so I've really got a LOT of cables in there. And it's a pain to have to wrap 'em, store 'em, and periodically cull 'em (I think I can safely chuck out the SVideo cables now...).
But whenever I need a cable whilst working, I can check that box, and after a bit of digging, it's usually in there. 5 minutes lost max.
If I don't have a cable in that box, I either have to go out to buy one - total time loss between 25 min and 2 hours depending on whether I need to journey to Maplin or can just get it locally - or buy from Amazon, which could be a day lost if the task I need the cable for is on the critical path for whatever I'm doing.
Local storage is sometimes more efficient.
(Having said that, I did make one change a while back. Unless I'm really, really sure I will need more, I only ever keep 2 of a specific cable type. At one point the spare cat-5 was threatening to take over the house.)
The key is to wrap them up somehow (I put mine in freezer bags) so they don't get tangled while in storage. The parent post's comment about a ball of cables suggests they don't do this. That can make storing lots of cables feel like a much worse idea than it actually is.
If you have them in freezer bags or whatever, on the other hand, you can just chuck them all in a box or bag, put it somewhere you can't see it, and you're done. When you need a cable or adapter or widget that you're certain you've got, rummage through your collection until you find it.
You're also less likely to lose any little caps or adapters that these things sometimes come with.
How do you accumulate that much stuff that you need what's essentially a storage locker at your home?
... By having kids. At least, that's what I've observed. You may be storing stuff for them, even after they leave the house. Also, you have everything that they've outgrown, but that you haven't had time to get rid of. A lot of the stuff that I see in garages appears to "belong" to someone else, including possibly the deceased.
But I think there are a couple of other factors that turn us into pack rats. One is that stuff is sold at discount in quantity, so we accumulate extra stuff. Shopping in quantity also limits the hassle of driving to the store and dealing with the crowds.
The other thing is that we're influenced by the fear of being spontaneously dumped into poverty, something that the hip young "minimalists" probably don't have to worry about. So we hoard material stuff as a hedge.
Granted, these things don't necessarily make sense. The money we could save by owning a smaller house (if zoning laws allowed such a thing to exist) would probably be worth more than the stuff that we hoard in our bigger house.
My garage is for my home gym, non-current-seasonal items, and household tools. If you want to maintain your own house, you'll need a fair amount of tools. It's mostly cheap ryobi stuff but it gets the job done and works well since it isn't being used super frequently like a professional would.
I had a similar observation, except that instead of just storing stuff, they're converting their garages into another bedroom.
I don't blame them, housing a car seems rather wasteful, doubly so if there's a perfectly usable driveway. It'll be interesting to see how Bay Area municipalities update their building codes if cars-as-a-service ever takes hold.
Not if you live anywhere with a significant amount of snow in the winter... Especially if the local municipal authorities combat that snow on the roads with absurd amounts of salt.
We have a garage, but we keep our car in the driveway and I say this as a New Englander. Having to keep the garage clean of the shit that falls off the car after a winter excursion is worse than having to brush the snow off after a storm, in my experience.
Having lived in New England, I wouldn't keep the car in a garage there, but my comment is about salt, not snow. Having also lived in Wisconsin, where the government uses literally mountains of salt each winter on the roads, I'll absolutely keep a car in the garage rather than near the street where large machines kick up salt as they dump it onto the roads. Enough collects just driving in the winter as is.
How is it a fantasy? If anything, I find it easier to get around in the winter, living in a city. Less traffic on the roads make cycling more pleasant (yes, I cycle in all levels of snow), and walking through town is peaceful and quiet(er) vs summer excursions.
I should say, I have a car, but we use it for leaving town, not <1 mile trips within it.
I said nothing about whether a car is a choice or a necessity. That would depend on where you live also, but for different reasons.
I only said that it is not wasteful to house a car under the following circumstances: in the winter, where there is a lot of snow, and where the local municipality dumps salt on the roads throughout the winter (which gathers on surface of the car, including exposed components beneath).
> How do you accumulate that much stuff that you need what's essentially a storage locker at your home?
By having a house, car(s) and kids. And seasons.
My garage is full of: five bikes, eight studded winter tyres (or 8 summer tyres, depending on which part of the year it is), ten large moving boxes full of clothing for other seasons, christmas decorations, tools of every description, cans of paint and other chemicals, large bags with ice hockey equipment, skis, ...
Just the car wheels and the bikes alone occupy most of the space a car would.
I recently went through my Big Box of Miscellaneous Computer Stuff and tossed out everything that wasn't current. Firewire cables? Gone. Mini DV recorder? Donated. Old A-B style USB cables? I only have one device that needs one, and it already has a cable for it. Gone.
Same with old 250 gb external USB drives - they're just too small these days to hold anything useful for me, so got rid of them.
Its not really that people hoard or anything like that, its just that many things that people want are quick bulky, and often people dont have a garden shed to store it in.
Items such as:
Lawnmower
tent
hedge trimmer
toolbox
bicycles for every family member
sleeping bags for every family member
The above is enough to half fill a garage if you want easy access to these items (i.e not stacked on one another)
unless you are in a 3000+ sqft home, where will you store your: snow sports equipment, summer sports equipment, bike, tools, camping equipment, car accessories, etc etc.
believe me, especially once you have kids, you'll have stuff coming out your ears.
I don't understand why he holds on to books? I have a couple of books that I hold on for frequent references, but the rest I just donate when I'm done. I'm sure my house makes it look like I don't care about books, but I would rather my shelves are a TODO list of things to read, not a dust gathering collection of things I've read in the past.
When my great-grandparents died I was part of the family that went through and made the decisions on what to keep and distribute in the family and what to ditch. When we couldn't find any takers for some clearly dear items (to my great-grandparents), into the trash or donation box they went. There simply wasn't time or interest to sort through two lifetime's worth of sentimental mementos that really only meant something to them.
Of both of them, the things anybody really kept fell into two camps: practical, furniture, bedding, that sort of thing and small tokens of general family interest like my great-grandfather's WW2 dog tags, or photos of distant relatives for the genealogy enthusiasts. There was some grumbling over having to take some of the furniture.
In a few years, I'll be dealing with this same situation again with my grandmother, my father and then my mother (if they go in that expected order). I'm trying to convince them to have a plan for what to do with all their collected stuff, because I don't really want any of it outside of again, a few general family items -- I definitely do not want their furniture.
If you go to Montreal, you'll see the solution adopted by rural people when they moved to the city in the first half of the 20th century: backyard sheds. I don't know about the US, but here in rural Quebec, people in my parents' generation tend to accumulate stuff in part, I think, because my grandparent's generation lived in relative poverty, and poor people tended to hang on to stuff just in case it could be useful at some point; for instance, when you got a new car, you'd keep the old one behind the shed so you could strip it for parts.
I hear this pride in having few 'things' from some folks - but it seems like it frequently comes from people who aren't creative, enjoy making things, or have non-computer related hobbies.
I'm creative/handy but have been through a minimising process (ongoing) to move into a tiny home. I've treated it more like 'cut away the fat' than 'trim it to the bone'. If I used something less than about once a year, it's gone. I was terrible for hanging onto stuff because 'I might need it one day' but really, if/when that day comes I'll find another solution - like every other non-hoarding person does. There are trade-offs of course, it's something like: keepability = (usefulness * frequencyOfUse) / size
If I have items which only do one job and another which covers several, the single-use items go. Eg: I only have gas for heat, so a kettle would be heated on the flame. But it can only heat water, whereas I have a saucepan which can heat water and also heat other things. So I don't need a kettle which I'd have to find space for when other things are on the hob (I really am in a small space). The same thinking has been applied to tools.
I paint a lot so throwing away paint and brushes would be wasteful - I'd end up buying more. But I also had lots of gathered/found materials which I use for recycled art - they got chucked (sad but they were rubbish when I collected them). When I want to do some recycled art I'll use what I can find at the time. The paint/brushes etc. that I kept live in a simple wooden chest. Its flat top is extra worktop space when I need it (eg. putting down a hot pan). Put a cushion on it and it's a seat. The table I paint at folds down to become my bed at night. I can't paint quite as large as I used to - fine, this will be a different phase in my life as an artist. I can't store loads of canvases but it's ok I just have to act more responsively. A good artist can make art with pen and paper, I learned to embrace restrictions as part of the creative process years ago.
I'm a long way from 'all fits in a suitcase' but I've got down to maybe 10-20% of what I owned a year ago. I feel lighter, more efficient (stuff's easier to find!), more free to relocate to different kinds of living spaces. I've shed a lot of nostalgic attachment to objects which I thought were important but do not miss.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. I refactored :)
That is the crux, I think - Personally, my non computing passion is music, and I have a ton of guitars (as I posted about elsewhere in this thread), plus recording equipment, effect pedals, amplifiers etc. which all give me a LOT of pleasure to play and tinker with when I am not cutting code.
Elsewhere in my life, I don't have a lot - I think I only have two drawers full of clothing and perhaps a few books and stuff. I have considered downsizing, but pretty much cannot bring myself to give away so much stuff that brings me joy.
My wife is the same - she is an artist, and has two separate areas of the house set up as her studio. Each is filled with canvases, paint tubes, easels, wooden boards, and a myriad of other stuff she uses for her mixed media work. Without any of that, I don't think she would feel as fulfilled and engaged with life, nor have a conduit to de-stress from every day responsibilities.
Because the sad simple truth is that buying trash, using it until it breaks and then buying a new one often makes more financial sense than trying to buy quality.
And not only that - buying trash today when you know that you'll be moving soon and possibly have a better income next time you buy. We are putting off major purchases because we can - because there is that option, and the user value of of 'trash' is 80% of that of the version that costs 10 times as much.
Also, at least in the home electronics space, there is a good chance that the 'trash' in 3 years time will be better than the quality product today (in short term functionality if not in longevity).
12 years ago I bought the best quality TV I could afford. And while it still works perfectly, it's objectively worse in just about every way then a current TV costing 20% of what I paid for it. However since it was so expensive and still works I cannot really bring myself to replace it.
I know as a kid I had a ton of "collections" - Pez, coins, stamps, Pokemon cards, Nintendo games, postcards, baseball cards, old newspapers, books.
For many of those, I would build up and hold on to things because I thought they'd be valuable some day, or maybe future kids/grandkids would benefit from having something handed down. I also like history and really enjoy seeing antique craftsmanship.
Even though stuff like the Beanie Baby craze crested and fell pretty quickly, you still have shows like Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars that show all of those hidden gems. Or, in the coin world, you'd read about some trove of uncirculated buffalo nickels being discovered in an attic somewhere. Or, if you ever go to the Andy Warhol museum, there's a whole section dedicated to his "time capsules" of collected mundane stuff, much of which ends up providing some kind of historical value.
When I was a kid, no one told me about putting money into mutual funds and compound interest (or if they did I didn't listen), let alone the principle of survivorship bias. Besides, that stuff is boring compared to the Star Wars Episode I Pez collection and commemorative Pepsi cans[1]. If I had held on to my 20 our of 24 opened cans, maybe I could have sold them for 30 bucks or so!
I've been having a lot of reality checks as I get older. I kept my Star Wars prequel novelizations in good condition, but I can also get a book in similar condition on Amazon for 5 or 6 bucks. And I never read my parents' favorite fiction books, so there's a solid chance that my kids won't care either. Maybe in the midst of getting rid of these things I'll get rid of the one thing that could be worth thousands in a generation or two, but that's like playing the lottery, isn't it?
Why on earth would it not apply to programmers? We accumulate just as much cruft, if not much more, than the usual person. I have old 8086s, Atari's, tons of computer peripherals for ports I no longer have, etc. Most of it chucked away in some attic (somewhere). We gather stuff that obsoletes fast than anything, besides food. And we as a industry produce it too: I had a Nokia 3110 for close to a decade. Now my phones seldom last me two years.
I think it will depend on where you are at in the 'programmer' journey. For me, while it was still an exciting hobby decades ago, I used to collect PCs and consoles, keyboards and peripherals etc. just to tinker with them and experiment.
Then, as programming became more and more of a 'day job' and not a fun side project, I found myself getting rid of the clutter of obsolete equipment around the place. 35 years later, I am happy with just a basic iMac as my main development machine, and a Lenovo laptop as my Windows/backup development machine. That is it. No more multi screen setups or fancy keyboards & mice even - just stock standard stuff to get the job done so I can spend energy on my passion projects.
Sounds exactly like my journy. I used to 'pride' myself on having a *nix running on all the major CPU families (x86, PPC, Sparc, alpha and MIPS) sitting in my study. Now I just have a basic PC and a laptop.
We're going through this right now with my grand parents. They lived a life in the country, for decades in the home they built (or started building but never actually finished), buying and selling antiques and other... stuff. It's hard. They want to downsize to a small apartment, but telling my grandfather that it means we have to sell his dozen tractors, in various states of disrepair or disassembly, because none of their children or grandchildren want them, breaks his heart.
1. Huge majority of stuff I used to have in 'volume' is now digital - Books, DVDs, CDs, records of certification, documents in general.
2. Technology stuff I had is far smaller (think transition from CRT to LCD screens).
3. I cant afford anywhere NEAR the size property that my parents would have so the number of actual furniture items I can own is already significantly reduced, and this in turn includes available storage space.
In part that could be because new generation can't hope to make money by owning their homes - rapid appreciation of homes was one-off thing and it hit their limit - homes aren't affordable for too many people now so they just can't appreciate more.
So, they don't want to own big homes, or at all. Smaller homes (probably condos) means less stuff.
Homes are definitely still appreciating - probably more so in the last decade than any time before. The problem is that they've increased to a point where most can no longer afford to enter the market. Someone, somewhere is capturing that wealth, though.
In last 10 years (Q2 2007 to Q2 2017) new homes appreciated by 31.97% only which is only 12.3% inflation-adjusted, and less than growth of size of average new home, so per square foot, homes has become slightly cheaper.
I think another aspect of this might be that our prized possessions are increasingly digital and take up approximately zero volume in real space. If my apartment burned down right now, the only thing I'd consider truly irreplaceable is the data on my hard drives.
Well, and my dad's old circular slide rule from his college days.
I don't have the upload bandwidth for offsite backups. But I do have my computer syncing to an external disk every 15 minutes, which I can grab and leave with at any time.
Would be good to encrypt (PGP?) the archive binaries before uploading. Encrypting+uploading 100s of GiB... takes days on a regular PC and home internet connection.
Reminds me a recent story: a friend's girlfriend, in her 50's, recently took off a month off to help move her widowed mother, in her 70's, down to a new retirement place in Florida. She took all her stuff from a 3000 sq ft house.
My two observations:
1. The economic price for someone to take a month off to move and rearrange a sizeable household is nontrivial.
2. That someone would desire to spent the rest of their days in a big house full of stuff is foreign to me. This is the generational divide.
The formation of a estate filled with physical possessions is a prime driver for a lot of older folks. The younger set isn't so interested in that.
My ideal retirement: a bed, a desk, and a laptop in a small flat on the left bank in Paris.
This is going to have a big impact on several industries. In the future, fine furniture and china manufacturers are going to look like furriers today.
Yeah, one doesn't need "stuff". Then try replacing the light bulb, connecting washing machine, assembling your bed, or preparing the meal without "stuff". Softening the ground for a new rent-to-own startup? Poverty industry FTW.
Some halogen light fittings, particularly older ones, do actually require a special tool to remove the bulbs. Though it's not exactly an expensive tool.
My wife's parents got stuck cleaning out my wife's grandparents house when they moved to assisted living. It was enough of an eye-opener that they did a huge purging when they got back home and ended up moving into a sparsely-furnished garden home. Even after slimming down, they continue to divest themselves of things. We are very grateful to know that we won't have a nightmare on our hands when it is time for us to help them move.
My family is another story. My dad is a collector of all sorts of things: vintage toys, LGB trains, 1930s radios, fine guitars... He has a 40' long storage unit just full of stuff. I dread the day we have to deal with it all.
I posted earlier about having to help clean out my grandmother's stuff and helping my parents do the same. Both experiences inspired me to deciliter.
I will say that for those of us who have to help our families go through this, be prepared for your family trying to "gift" things that are important to them on to you and when you decline because you do not want more stuff you may be accused of having no sentimentality. I went through this with my parents and I simply had to hold my ground. I accepted two things that did hold special meaning to me, but all other items I declined. I refused to allow their things to become my obligation to house for the next several decades.
I have so much stuff. It's not hoarding, really. I get rid of junk. I just have several houses and a few storage units. I've scads of music gear, tools, vehicles, etc.
My kids jokingly lament the need to go through it after I die. Meh... At least it is organized. I kinda like the idea of leaving them a giant task. Much of it is nominally valuable. They will be busy for quite a while. This makes me smile. Knowing them, they will enjoy it as well.
It's really interesting to watch that TV show, American Pickers, because you can see in different episodes all sides of this equation. Some people are just straight up hoarders. Some people have very meticulously cataloged collections, they're just big. And sometimes you have people who have been left one of the above by their parents, and invariably just want to get rid of it and find it extremely emotionally trying.
Take that last one to heart, and think of how it's not just a big task for your kids, but it's a really emotionally difficult and painful one for them as well.
If he's got it in a storage unit then that makes it really easy for you. There's a market for buying the contents of storage sheds with vague itineraries. I'm sure one full of collectables would sell and plenty of the stuff would find its way to people that would care about it.
My soon-to-be-80 father is very cognizant of this. We never had much stuff to begin with. Four of us - mom, dad, sister and I -- live in an 800 sq ft rented home all our lives in India. Even then, he's been mercilessly shedding all the little things he has, that he doesn't use anymore, for the past 2 years.
So much so that he even dumped old baby photos of me and photos of my Grandfather -- served in the British Indian Army during World War II in Burma -- and many other rare family photos.
I was pretty mad at him for that, but I guess this means I don't have to deal with "stuff" when he passes, esp. given I live in the US and he lives in India.
That sounds really tragic, about the pictures. Its great he got rid of stuff, but those pictures would have been priceless from a historical standpoint. I wonder how many such treasures are in cupboards all over India, their owners not realizing how important they may be...
I think we should focus on preserving digital content instead since most people today are taking pictures with their smartphones and never bother backing them up, either in the cloud or in physical form.
My father became aware of this and started shipping stuff to myself [and presumably my sibling] in order to clear out his in-home crap sitting around when he died.
So far, I've been thankful. I've been going through my own backlog of crap and it's been great. I have to imagine it's been similar for my father and my sister.
My father's goal is no have as little bullshit for me and my sibling to sort through as possible when he dies. To me, this is great. Not that I hate my father or whatever, but that he wants as small a Death Footprint as possible. So do I for other reasons.
When my dad passed away about 8 years ago, my mum had this cathartic episode where she gave away virtually everything that she and dad owned, which even surprised us (my sisters and I). She even gave stuff away to strangers who came around to help her pack stuff to move to a smaller place.
In one way, it was great that we didn't have to sort it all out and deal with it, but in another, there were some things (like my dad's golf clubs and the family piano) that I would dearly have liked to hold on to because of the intense good memories those items represented to me (mum taught me to play piano on that particular instrument, and I have very cherished memories of playing golf with my dad when he used that set).
Now I am in the same bind, as I look around at all my stuff, including a collection of 30+ guitars that I have built up over the years. I've told my sons (who are both musical by the way) that they will inherit them when I am gone, but NOT to hold on to them as obsessively as I have. I explained to them that if it will help them to pay for studies, or buy a car/house etc. that they need, they should feel no hesitation in selling any and all of it as they see fit - there is no emotional obligation to them to hang on to 'stuff' unless they actually feel an emotional connection to do so.
At one stage, I even considered being buried with one of my favourite guitars, but then I thought 'No', it would do much better service above ground if they can use or sell it instead.
Why not just sell it all now when you're alive instead of making it a burden on them after you die? I'm just getting a dumpster over to my dads house and chucking everything when the time comes.
Good point - but a lot of these are rare and vintage guitars, and I actually still enjoy playing most, if not all of them, on a regular basis.
I suppose if the time came when I could not play any more due to age/illness etc. then I might do that, and give them the chance to choose a couple that they might want to keep after I am gone (they are both good guitar players in their own right).
Nice sentiment, but liquidating can add compounded stress after the loss of a loved one. My step-father collected vintage guitars, old school amps/speakers/mixers and had a fully operational cabinet shop he refused to deal with when Stage 4 was diagnosed. It was a PIA to blindly price, identify/fix deficiencies and find buyers after his passing. Several strangers benefited greatly from our lack of knowledge and time.
I don't think I'd want to keep much of my parents stuff either. But my sister and I were thinking back to all the cool shit that was in my grandparents place back in the 80s and 90s... they had all kinds of cool furniture, art, tools, and objects. The sort of stuff that hipsters now pay a fortune for.
So maybe the answer is to put everything in long-term storage, then skip a generation and wait till it becomes cool again :)
- Pictures with people are much more fun to look at later in life than landscapes, unless you're an amazing landscape photographer of course!
- Get off the tourist bus when visiting foreign countries. Walk the city. Pop your head into a local shop. Try that weird doughy thing, it might be tasty. Be almost late for your train - very exciting.
- Climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower (ugh, it's tough, but I remember it) then have wine and cheese in the park on the lawn to cap it off.
Relating to too many things, I have 5 large moving boxes of photo albums from my parents along and a few trinkets here and there. Fortunately me and my siblings had no arguments in the distribution or tossing of just about everything. The photo albums are being scanned slowly but surely.
Plus they're cool parents...they wouldn't want to burden me. I'm just conscious of the fact that they plan to move from a very big house to a not big house. Meanwhile there are boxes that haven't been unpacked from the 2001 move. They're not hoarders...they just have too much crap.
Where I grew up we had space to grow out. This means our two stall garage became a place for storage, pack ratting. Some of it good but a lot of it.. Eh?
I have to admit this meant that there was never a shortage of tools but this also meant that during my father's passing I had to decompress and sort all of it. Some of it is packratted in my own three stall garage now.
Having a trait to collect myself it is hard to tell when you are going overboard.
Some things like early Nintendo games paid handsomely to keep about. Others like well worn copies of B rate VHS movies? Not so much. The advancement in movie quality made from very high grade studio masters was easy to see if you had technical knowledge in that area but the growth in perceived value for other things is hard to gauge. Growing up with the room to store what you like meant a lot of oddball stuff got packed away.
I'm trying to be more selective with what I pack than my father before me.. But hell, some things I'm going to keep just cause I like them.
Most of my "stuff" is clothes (which I actually wear), books, and hobby-related equipment. There is nothing in the garage but my washer and dryer, and, occasionally, my car. I have no desire to clutter up my apartment with more, though I am thinking of putting a workshop in my garage and just parking in my driveway.
This wasn't my comment but it may as well have been. This describes my material posessions exactly, except for no garage. I'm 32 and live in a one room warehouse art studio with a shared bathroom. I can't find reason to get a legal home because this works perfect.
I wonder how much of this was brought on by the Cold War and constant headlines of one-ups-manship by nation-states and maybe that sub-consciously fed into US culture.
The only reference points and influences people had were socializing with others and 3 TV channels. No internet, facebook, instagram or twitter.
In todays culture you can find nearly any group you want to associate with online. You won't feel like an outcast and if you live in a populated enough area you can probably find like-minded people. I think with this available, if you see your neighbors have new fine china (new fancy car, or whatever) and that isn't your thing, you pretty much don't care.
My grandparents entered the antique business in their retirement. They did well for themselves and passed away in the same year, about 5 years ago. My family is faced with just forgetting about all the energy they have spent trying to get money for the items. Of course, a few things had surprisingly high value but 99% was more trouble than $.
My grandfather was a uranium physicist for the Atomic Energy Commission and I grabbed as much related memorabilia as I could. They are currently stored in a secure barn attic but I want to get them out. But, actually do want to test them for radioactivity lol. Anybody know about this?
One of the fire houses in Montgomery County, Maryland, would now and then test stuff for radioactivity. Friends of friends once took some "Fiesta Ware" that had a glazing with some uranium in it. As I recall, the fire department found no measurable radioactivity.
My old man was talking to me the other day about this.
He was telling me that self-storage will be great investment, with all the old people moving to smaller retirement homes and villages, they need a place to store all their stuff.
About 20 years ago,I looked around the back yard of an uncle born in the early 20s. Back by the fence, there was a patched gas tank from a pickup truck. There were also four or five rusted out hibachis, which were neatly nested together and leaning against a tree. A cousin to whom I mentioned this suggested that it was the effect of a childhood during the Depression.
I'm also convinced that we've come to value immaterial goods more than a plentitude of physical widgets.
I also believe that we're instinctively attracted to the act of fiddling; while yesterday we needed a lot of physical things to appease this instinct, we can content ourselves with an App store, with grooming our computers, phones, emails, social profiles, etc.
This is the problem I will have with my parents and in-laws.
I hope to find a charity who would take everything and use what they want/can and get rid of the rest. There are valuable things and non-valuable ones, I do not want anything (I love my parents but am not attached to material things and do not like souvenirs)
I've wondered where this stuff ends up after donating to charity. Is there a set of less fortunate people that could really make use of these things? Are there people eager to add more of these items to their "collections?" Do the charities end up discarding large percentages of this stuff?
If the stuff you have is collectible, and in new/gently used condition then try completeset.com/sell - they are a TechStars grad out of Cincinnati that sell the items for you on consignment. Easy way to have some "found money." They even pay for shipping.
I've been working to reduce amount of stuff I own lately. Now I can fit it all in one carry-on and one luggage bag - I literally moved to another country a couple of months back without paying anything extra or shipping anything. And I never want to go back to own more.
My dad, my sister and I don't like to keep stuff around that is not being used. We will keep the stuff we have as long as it makes sense to but we don't believe having more stuff is good. We think living a minimalist lifestyle is the way to live.
Before anyone accuses me of slagging on Millennials I don't mean it that way. I mean since we have a manufacturing base that is in my opinion far more aggressive about planned obsolescence than 50+ years ago and several generations used to cheap, low quality goods manufactured overseas why would they want or need anything else? We value the novel and inexpensive over the durable.
My mother wasn't quite as bad, but she used to have her own mountain of decorations until I got her to agree to let me get rid of about 75% of it. It's still taking up about 12 or so large plastic storage bins, but it's way less than it had been.
Nowadays we do want durable items even if we are more at leisure to replace them. I am very happy that most of the easy to fail components in my MacBook Air are replaceable (I/O board, fan, battery, SSD) and would love it if other parts were too. Working on computers for as long as I have I know people like to get what they can out of a computer; the number who just go buy a new one when it dies isnt as high as you'd think. Same with other items like phones, cars, etc.
Of course, now I realise jus how close the Second World War was. If the war had finished in 1997, with rationing continuing until 2007, I too might be loathe to throw things away.
But I draw a line at normal paper :)
She also used to wash ziploc bags for reuse.
There, it is just not so visible because disk space is ever increasing as well as getting cheaper.
In the days of Napster, people collected gigabytes of music just to have it - at some point this was more minutes than they could ever listen to in a life span.
Few people actually care to collect that stuff in order to make it accessible to more people. For example, the people at archive.org, as well as many libraries, are doing a great job.
But the majority of collectors collect only for their own, usually with an unwieldy directory structures and meaningless file names (track1, track2, ...). They won't ever find anything they search for. It's often faster to search & buy those via Internet. Same with movies.
It is even worse with personal photographs and videos. The same way some people have loads of paper photographs around, other have disks full of digital photographs. 200+ photographs per day of vacation are not uncommon. Who will ever look at those?
Reducing those to the "best" 10-20 items already feels like an imposition to most. Reducing those further to 1 photograph to summarize the vacation is considered extremist by most. And even then, they will just mark the best photos, but won't delete anything except for the most blurred garbage photos.
Even more strangely, some people do feel the urge to clean up their mess, but as with physical items, deleting loads of digital items takes a lot of time for them. This is the next round of absurdity: They would rather spend a weekend (or full week) on finishing their photo/video archive than to go out for another trip.
Maybe we need a "digital item" version of Paul Graham's classic "stuff" article? http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html
I have thousands of albums in my google play account, go through spurts of adding more, and constantly listen to the whole collection on shuffle. It shows how many times each song has been listened to, it's rare for me to ever see a song without at least one play.
(And playing it on a TV screen in the background while doing computer/tablet/smartphone stuff is not what I would consider "healthy" consumption, because then it is more a source of noise than anything else. You can't really enjoy it and miss most of the movie.)
It's small enough that it isn't an issue, and it's nice to look at the refrigerator and remember all the places we've been.
I'm very much in the memento way of things, doesn't have to be related & for me at least it can be quite literally anything. I won't grab something for each place I go to but rather something that can define the whole trip. That's done, more subconsciously. Normally it's a wrist band (I tend to go to more festivals than day's out/traditional holidays) but I'll pick up anything, that last break I took was down to Cornwall & have picked up the smallest of pebbles but it's very particular to the geology in the area. Which to me say's a lot about the whole trip & the time it took place.
It's very easy for the floor space consumed by an object to exceed its value. Especially if you're renting, in which case you could probably assign an actual monthly monetary cost to keeping every single object in your flat.
Absolutely, it can be a real burden. Especially if it requires any kind of cleaning or maintenance.
Conversely the time cost of acquiring stuff has collapsed. You don't have to buy or hang onto stuff in advance of possibly requiring it if you can have it same-day shipped from Amazon.
Now half the stuff you buy is toxic waste when you go to get rid of it. You have to make special trips to the place that collects paint, for instance, which isn't the same place as electronics. There are all sorts of projects my parents would have done without a second thought that I'll pass on because I don't want to spend all that time getting rid of stuff.
On the flip side, it's kind of interesting that products made in china are now synonymous with "cheap crap", while at one time we held finely made, fragile cups from China on display in our homes.
Low-end auction houses are also great places to pick up whole sets on the cheap. At the very worst these are a lot more interesting than plain white junk.
To me it seems more wasteful to have junk taking up room in your living space. Living with less is desirable.
But note that in particular is a cultural thing where people are cooking at home less, smaller families, less formality, etc.
We only took the silver cutlery and use it as every day.
There is just no need and space to waste for stuff that is kept out of usage, especially with something like silver cutlery which doesn't degrade by usage and even stays shiny if you use it constantly.
I think this trend will actually change with us, my parents have loads of stuff that I'd like, and I've build half my furniture myself, and regularly fix things rather than buy new ones, despite not being handy at all, with YouTube teaching me how. The other half is things I've inherited from my grand parents. Not because I liked it, at first anyway, but because I don't really want to own something with a CO2 footprint leading all over the world or things were build by slave labour.
Besides, the quality and detail in old hand made stuff is so much better than the shitty gluewood you buy in ikea.
Of course that's just my view on things based on myself and my circle of friends, who are strikingly similar to me when I think about it, and we could simply be odd millennials.
As far as your concepts go on C02 and inherited guilt..grow up.
Are you suggesting only children and youth care about the environment? If true, that's terrible!
(Edit: A downvote doesn't explain what I've misunderstood.)
Fashion-driven, low-quality overpriced US cars left the market wide open for cheap, high-quality foreign imports in the 1970s - and forced US manufacturers to significantly increase quality. That's pretty much the opposite of the story you're telling.
Instead I see a society which had a post-WWII manufacturing abundance just binging on material goods to the point that they were buried in stuff in a way that has never really happened before and people don't have good mechanisms for dealing with. At least not until they realise that "stuff" is the problem.
Both my parents and grandparents would claim that they bought stuff that lasted but they just bought the trendy items of the 1950s and 1980s respectively, and 90% of it went in the trash years ago.
On the other hand, my parents put away all leftovers and eventually also eat it. It is pretty similar with many other every-day things.
I just lived with my parents for a few weeks after living abroad for 5 years and noticed how they have kept so many things that I have seen when I was a child. I am not even talking about 1 or 2 things, but many (or most) things.
I find it difficult to appreciate this viewpoint. There's a certain elegance in using your resources efficiently and not wasting things. I find it significantly more satisfying to find a use for things rather than discarding them. This also applies to possessions, and more abstract things like writing code and not wasting lines of code or memory, or writing and not wasting words.
I prefer to buy fresh food because I believe it's healthier and I have the money to do so.
Anything spicy improves with a little time, and I've found the same to be true with tomato sauce and cooked cheese - so curries, chillies, lasagna etc etc all improve. soup is often better the next day too.
Sure, but it's time I enjoy spending. Some people play computer games or watch TV for an hour after work to relax, I cook dinner.
If you enjoy handling food then learning about handling left overs is a big part of that. If you go back and look at weekly food schedules from the past you will see patterns, were people cook one type of food day one to have base or ingredient for the next few days of cooking.
It obviously depends on the circumstances. I am more talking about the pattern of wasting, than accidentally wasting food now and then.
At the end of the gathering, everyone "fights" (politely, but very insistently) not to be the ones to take it home, 'cause they'll be forced to not let it go to waste.
I usually throw these because I don't mind binning unhealthy food I can easily replace rather than further harming my health. The latter is a far more useful and expensive acquisition than a quarter-pound of $25/lb cheese.
A staggering 50% of the food produced is wasted somewhere along the line. If you look at moving towards a sustainable society, food waste is actually a huge sub-problem of that, which has to be solved at some point, instead of cutting down ever more rainforest every year etc. etc. to sustain the current wasteful lifestyle.
Our parent generation didn't waste food, and the next generation will probably not be able to either (simply from rising prices).
In a world that sustainably generated enough food for everyone, it would not be wrong to throw away food. It might be that we can get there. Food production today is not sustainable, so at least let's not waste it.
If you press me, yes, I'm sure there's an element of "it's in bad taste" there too that made me react so strongly (it's similar to how rich kids pour out good champagne on the floor to display their wealth). That's closer to your suggestion.
A few months ago our 11 year old Nilfisk vacuum cleaner broke down. Back then it was about A$450. Instead of buying an equivalent new one for ~A$700 or so, I repaired it for ~A$250. I figured it'd still be better than buying a new $200-300 vacuum every 2-3 years.
Sometimes buying expensive stuff is the cheaper option.
I have Oneida flatware, solid wood furniture, and a Blendtec blender because these things will last. I don't want to buy flatware ever again, and, because I bought quality the first time, I won't have to, and I wish there were more things I could buy for life.
[1] when I was a kid we'd go shopping in Italy or Austria because so many things/brands (clothes, toys, food, everything really) simply weren't available at home or were significantly cheaper across the border. We would also repair eeeverything for as long as we could and take extra care to treat things nicely so they wouldn't wear or break.
At the point that the fountain of artificially cheap consumer goods from China dries up, they are in for a rude awakening. Suddenly quality items made to last by local craftsmen won't seem so old-fashioned!
Unfortunately this is a problem that perpetuates itself. As more people buy the throwaway goods, repairmen see business dry up, and become rarer. The ones left are expensive.
Quality items made to last by local craftsmen sound great! As long as there's any craftsmen left by the time people turn to them for business.
That's what we're sold, it doesn't mean it's what we value. If there was an easy way to tell durability at time of purchase, I think the trend would shift very quickly.
Years ago I committed to reducing the clutter in my life. It was such a pivotal moment. It was no longer necessary to move things from here to there in order to put up Christmas decorations, etc. I do think that overall we see value in things that truly have no monetary value all while keeping this item of "value" in the attic or in a box without seeing the light of day for decades. Things take a great deal of time and energy and for me personally, there seemed to be a connection between a disorganized living space with a disorganized mind/life. I cleaned all of that up and found I had better health, had time for the things I enjoy most in life, and was far happier than I would have imagined by having "less."
I agree and think this concept is ancient, evidenced by the concept of spring cleaning and the idea of-not necessarily the quote - "cleanliness is next to godliness".
Of course, my real point is that both connections are tenuous and reductive. It's a fun bit of pop psychology, but I doubt either is actually true in general.
My tool cabinet has about $4000 in tools at this point, many motorcycle-specific ordered from abroad and not easily borrowed or bought at short notice.
Board games my wife and I enjoy sharing; my archery equipment; snorkel and dry bag; guitar, etc. As it is, it's a good thing my dad was a tool junky (and master craftsman), so he didn't mind my storing all my woodworking and hobby electronics gear in his garage.
Yeah, if my only occupations were programming and media consumption, it would be a lot easier to live out of a suitcase, but physical activities are kind of amazing.
Perhaps we are dinosaurs who cannot understand this new world where everything is virtual.
a tv for gaming/television is also out of the question, they'd never let you take that along in your suitcase.
doesn't sound like a life i'd like to be honest.
in all seriousness, its perfectly fine to have stuff. just ask yourself before you buy it, wherever you'll still be using it in ~12 month or so. otherwise, its probably just a fad you shouldn't spent money on.
I have always rented serviced apartments so the bed sheets, cutlery and other equipment is always in the flat I rent so I use that.
My sports clothes and other hobby equipment also fits into the single suitcase. I keep my clothes collection quite small, if I am not wearing something for a year I will throw it away or give to charity.
You'd be surprised how useful it is to have all your stuff fit into single big suitcase if you love traveling around the world. It's very easy for me to travel or to move around the world for work.
I had to help my sister move apartment recently and I was shocked by the massive amount of stuff she owns. So many suitcases and bags, we had to rent a big van to move it all. I don't get it.
And why won't they let you take you kitchen knives on a plane? I fly with kitchen knives all the time.
I suppose one could rent those sort of items as needed but for most of the nuclear family population it is financially more logical to own them.
Most serviced apartments have all of those (well except lawn mower obviously). So just rent serviced apartment wherever you are living/working at the moment and you can easily have all your stuff fit into one suitcase.
This will help you move after better jobs easily and whatever premium you pay you will make back by having better jobs and higher salary imho.
Job mobility is very undervalued these days. I think it's a very strong job negotiation tactic to be so mobile as you have many options to choose from for work as it's so easy for you to move.
Most people don't move all that often after their 20s or early 30s (even without a family).
But I am single and right now exactly in the 20s/early 30s part of my life so I find the mobility I gain from owning very minimal inventory of things great.
I have lived and worked in 4 different countries since 2010 and it was great to get to work in different places/cultures and experience life abroad. Obviously eventually I will settle down somewhere.
Having nothing to move could actually indicate to an employer that you are not planning to stay very long.
Depends on how often you move. Are you moving once every other year or once every other decade?
If you can tell your potential employer that you can fly to country X any time as you just put all your things into a single suitcase, it makes it much easier to relocate for jobs around the world.
Once you settle down and have family / children, obviously you will probably stop moving around and probably stay in a single place for a long time and only move once in a decade or so.
Even if you keep around some stuff that are not vital but ‘nice to have’, maintaining a restricted set of things that are enough to live your life if the whole family had to move without notice helps for peace of mind.
Of course, YMMV, but in my experience life is generally less simple once you share it with other people.
And this is just hobbies/passions. Stuff you mostly don't want to rent for many reasons. Good luck fitting a bike or few pairs of skis in some suitcases :) It is true I have more sport stuff than all the rest combined (non-sport clothing, electronics, kitchen, just all the other stuff).
I've been through phase in life where I could fit all my stuff into 1 small room and still live&sleep in it. Great times, but I wouldn't go back, for many reasons.
What you propose sounds boring/empty life, or very expensive and yet subpar experience on many levels (renting everything all the time).
I don't quite see how an item lying in an attic would make you unhappy.
An item lying in an attic saps energy from you, often when you least expect it. So yeah, it can make you unhappy.
I recommend giving everything to a charitable organisation. They'll know what to do with all the stuff. Where I live, they'd come with their truck and take everything.
I make more money than my parents ever did, and I didn't move into a ridiculously overpriced city, but there's no way I'll ever own a house as large as they did.
I remember growing up in a variety of houses that had, get this, a dining room that wasn't just a table in the kitchen, a living room, and another room that was just kept neat and tidy for visitors. A whole room in the house on the ground floor, used only a couple of times a month. It was a big room too. Enough space for a half-dozen people to sit down. The amount of space my parents had in their houses is just amazing in retrospect. Of course, in a number of countries that's still pretty standard. Like having a place to put a washing machine and associated; us suckers in the UK think it's normal to put that lot in the kitchen, jammed in with the tiny cupboards. I mean, my parents had a dryer AND a chest freezer just kept out in another room. Well, my future sure looks a lot more depressing now that I've thought about this :)
I share it only with my wife and now it's in a big city with facilities (Back then they were rural) and it's the smallest house of all my friends.
Did your parents live in a city the size you currently live in, the same distance out from the entertainment district? Same hospital access, same standard of schooling etc?
I have no idea of your case but people often forget how little their parents/grandparents really had compared to what we've come to expect.
Space was cheap when my parents were buying; I don't think there's any doubt abut that.
I came to a realisation that much of what our society is about is focused on getting people to buy more stuff.
I don't want it. Minimise the stuff.
edit: I'm still surrounded by piles of it. Getting rid of stuff is hard. There's a sense of "value" attached to stuff even if you'd never miss it if you never saw it again.
I am getting a bit sick and tired, however, of this refrain that everyone needs to be a minimalist. I like my stuff. I try not to be a hoarder, but I like buying things and having things, and I don't feel guilty about it.
My personal tastes are for practical things, I don't have anything decorative that I care about, but I do love the 'toys' that I have. I like my metal working tools, my woodworking tools, my 3D printer, and all of the stuff in my workshop because I like making things. I enjoy buying things to make my hobbies more enjoyable.
I like my RC helicopters, even though I rarely get to fly them at the moment. I like my old video game consoles, so I can satisfy my nostalgia when I want to. I might not play them more than once every few years, but I am glad I have them. I look forward to sharing them with my daughter some day when she is old enough to play.
I like having all my old legos and erector sets, and look forward to sharing them with my daughter as well.
I don't feel 'cluttered' by my stuff. I have a good organization system, and they don't interfere with my day to day life. What is the harm in having a box of legos in the closet?
Everyone is entitled to live how they want, but don't act like I am a bad person because I like having stuff.
All the other makers here will understand that sentiment. Tools take up space, but having the ability to actually make and repair things without having to rely on some shared makerspace or workshop is mentally so fulfilling, not to mention economical if you consider not having to rely on contractors and handymen so much for the basic upkeep of your house.
This year I used my amateur woodworking skills to build a wall-to-wall (390cm/12'9"), floor-to-ceiling (270cm/8'10") bookcase in our home. It is filled with books my girlfriend and I have read, still have to read, want to reread at some point, or want to share with others. Collecting and reading books is our material vice. Some people love it, most people wonder why we don't just buy two e-readers (philistines…).
I spoke only for myself :-)
This is definitely untrue. That may be the case for _some_ people, but to reduce that feeling to only growing up with plenty is overly reductive. I didn't grow up in a family with much money, and I make a very comfortable living now. My early 20s definitely had a bit of a hoarder tendency from my childhood, but much more importantly, I never got in the habit of _acquiring_ things the way my friends seem to have. I've managed to get over the instinct to keep things unnecessarily and I'm a more comfortable selling/donating (or rarely, disposing of) things I don't need anymore.
It's far easier to believe that there's a generational cultural difference regarding attitudes towards decluttering than it is to make the facile assumption that wanting less stuff is a consequence of living in abundance.
EDIT: turns out Mel Brooks has already spoken on the matter: https://youtu.be/Ah-WdAwVg9c?t=59
I'm hoping that this feeling will enable me to either retire a little earlier - as I've saved well, or set up my own business one day - but then again, the risk of my own business! Argh ;)
That's also because most of us live in cities nowadays and you can access to "stuff" you need outside of your place pretty much anytime, anywhere, therefore there is no need for you to build inventory anymore at home. But if you were living far from everything, you'd definitely want to possess things.
Both times were escapes to something better and the first time I had stressed greatly about "what am I going to do with all this stuff?". Actually getting rid of the stuff was a real relief, and now I wonder why I kept most of it and moved it so many times.
https://www.netflix.com/title/80114460
Got rid of 20% of my stuff this year and hope to get rid of 20% more.
Then I realized that the two who are interviewed for it were in fact the ones making the documentary, so it has a whole infomercial feel to it.
Totally. I felt the same way and couldn't watch it past the 15 minute mark. Those 2 guys were mostly talking about their own lives and marketing their minimalist site (not I won't link to it here :)
With a few exceptions, that's why most people have jobs!
A lot of the place in the world for family heirlooms went the way of the family homestead.
So I probably don't want my parents' curtains, but I will see about their table, dresser, old household tools like scissors, etc. A recent visit to a restaurant decorated in a style called rustic chic has me rethinking even my narrow style requirements. I used to be zen minimalist. Like my silverware has no engraving, it's flat and plain. But the restaurant had these old plates, forks, and knives. None of them matched but there was an overall similar style, and they were probably expensive when they were new. So I might consider my parents' old china or crystal, but instead of locking it away I would try to use it every day.
And books and photographs can be shelved or wall-mounted, taking up negligible volume --- up to a point, but still I would have hard time parting with even a single old photo.
I absolutely hate how older folks seem to covet things they're sentimental about. Lock it in a box or display case and never make it a part of your life. Fuck that - when I inherit the things that remind me of my mom or dad I'm going to use them until they become useless. I will love them for their use, and not treat them like something to be kept on a shelf or in a locked safe.
I'm going to keep my dining room table laid out nice like it's Christmas Dinner everyday and I will not cry over the stains that accumulate.
The sad irony is when I inherit my parents' nice things I will then be putting my parents in a box.
I hounded an old roommate of mine that moved out with my scissors. Inherited from my father they were rough looking and probably better described as shears but they kept an edge like nothing else and cut without effort.
I like to believe I hounded my old roomie until he gave them back because I couldnt readily replace them even at the hardware store. But mostly I think it is because he took my fathers scissors and that peeved me good. :)
Couldn't anyone be a minimalist by that logic? I suppose a vague term like that can quickly become meaningless.
I would love to use a Kindle for all my reading, but physical books are still more pleasurable to read. It makes it hard for me to part with some books for now. Though some books are only worth reading once and I am happy to give them away after finishing them.
Just for fun, George Carlin (RIP) on 'stuff': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLoge6QzcGY
(You probably won't want most of them then, but some at least.)
When I was younger I had a moment where I was sick of my computer cable hoarding. Every device gives you cables and you never know which one of your ball of 200 you're going to need. I eventually concluded that re-buying things is cheaper than the cost to my happiness by having to store these things forever, not knowing which you'll actually need.
I occasionally get annoyed by my Big Box Of Cables: I used to work in digital filmmaking, so I've really got a LOT of cables in there. And it's a pain to have to wrap 'em, store 'em, and periodically cull 'em (I think I can safely chuck out the SVideo cables now...).
But whenever I need a cable whilst working, I can check that box, and after a bit of digging, it's usually in there. 5 minutes lost max.
If I don't have a cable in that box, I either have to go out to buy one - total time loss between 25 min and 2 hours depending on whether I need to journey to Maplin or can just get it locally - or buy from Amazon, which could be a day lost if the task I need the cable for is on the critical path for whatever I'm doing.
Local storage is sometimes more efficient.
(Having said that, I did make one change a while back. Unless I'm really, really sure I will need more, I only ever keep 2 of a specific cable type. At one point the spare cat-5 was threatening to take over the house.)
If you have them in freezer bags or whatever, on the other hand, you can just chuck them all in a box or bag, put it somewhere you can't see it, and you're done. When you need a cable or adapter or widget that you're certain you've got, rummage through your collection until you find it.
You're also less likely to lose any little caps or adapters that these things sometimes come with.
(I just wrap 'em neatly currently. The film industry is good at techniques for cable control. But I've not heard the "freezer bag" idea before! )
... By having kids. At least, that's what I've observed. You may be storing stuff for them, even after they leave the house. Also, you have everything that they've outgrown, but that you haven't had time to get rid of. A lot of the stuff that I see in garages appears to "belong" to someone else, including possibly the deceased.
But I think there are a couple of other factors that turn us into pack rats. One is that stuff is sold at discount in quantity, so we accumulate extra stuff. Shopping in quantity also limits the hassle of driving to the store and dealing with the crowds.
The other thing is that we're influenced by the fear of being spontaneously dumped into poverty, something that the hip young "minimalists" probably don't have to worry about. So we hoard material stuff as a hedge.
Granted, these things don't necessarily make sense. The money we could save by owning a smaller house (if zoning laws allowed such a thing to exist) would probably be worth more than the stuff that we hoard in our bigger house.
I don't blame them, housing a car seems rather wasteful, doubly so if there's a perfectly usable driveway. It'll be interesting to see how Bay Area municipalities update their building codes if cars-as-a-service ever takes hold.
Not if you live anywhere with a significant amount of snow in the winter... Especially if the local municipal authorities combat that snow on the roads with absurd amounts of salt.
I should say, I have a car, but we use it for leaving town, not <1 mile trips within it.
I said nothing about whether a car is a choice or a necessity. That would depend on where you live also, but for different reasons.
I only said that it is not wasteful to house a car under the following circumstances: in the winter, where there is a lot of snow, and where the local municipality dumps salt on the roads throughout the winter (which gathers on surface of the car, including exposed components beneath).
By having a house, car(s) and kids. And seasons.
My garage is full of: five bikes, eight studded winter tyres (or 8 summer tyres, depending on which part of the year it is), ten large moving boxes full of clothing for other seasons, christmas decorations, tools of every description, cans of paint and other chemicals, large bags with ice hockey equipment, skis, ...
Just the car wheels and the bikes alone occupy most of the space a car would.
Same with old 250 gb external USB drives - they're just too small these days to hold anything useful for me, so got rid of them.
Items such as:
Lawnmower
tent
hedge trimmer
toolbox
bicycles for every family member
sleeping bags for every family member
The above is enough to half fill a garage if you want easy access to these items (i.e not stacked on one another)
believe me, especially once you have kids, you'll have stuff coming out your ears.
Of both of them, the things anybody really kept fell into two camps: practical, furniture, bedding, that sort of thing and small tokens of general family interest like my great-grandfather's WW2 dog tags, or photos of distant relatives for the genealogy enthusiasts. There was some grumbling over having to take some of the furniture.
In a few years, I'll be dealing with this same situation again with my grandmother, my father and then my mother (if they go in that expected order). I'm trying to convince them to have a plan for what to do with all their collected stuff, because I don't really want any of it outside of again, a few general family items -- I definitely do not want their furniture.
Tons of stuff for cheap since everyone is trying to get rid of things, but nobody is buying.
My best deal was when I got them to help me carry over a coffee table, mini-dining table and 5 chairs. Of course I paid full price.
P.S. if you mail a lot of things, you can usually buy old stamps on Ebay for ~65 cents on the dollar from collectors whose stamps aren't valuable.
Rich people have money; poor people have stuff.
If I have items which only do one job and another which covers several, the single-use items go. Eg: I only have gas for heat, so a kettle would be heated on the flame. But it can only heat water, whereas I have a saucepan which can heat water and also heat other things. So I don't need a kettle which I'd have to find space for when other things are on the hob (I really am in a small space). The same thinking has been applied to tools.
I paint a lot so throwing away paint and brushes would be wasteful - I'd end up buying more. But I also had lots of gathered/found materials which I use for recycled art - they got chucked (sad but they were rubbish when I collected them). When I want to do some recycled art I'll use what I can find at the time. The paint/brushes etc. that I kept live in a simple wooden chest. Its flat top is extra worktop space when I need it (eg. putting down a hot pan). Put a cushion on it and it's a seat. The table I paint at folds down to become my bed at night. I can't paint quite as large as I used to - fine, this will be a different phase in my life as an artist. I can't store loads of canvases but it's ok I just have to act more responsively. A good artist can make art with pen and paper, I learned to embrace restrictions as part of the creative process years ago.
I'm a long way from 'all fits in a suitcase' but I've got down to maybe 10-20% of what I owned a year ago. I feel lighter, more efficient (stuff's easier to find!), more free to relocate to different kinds of living spaces. I've shed a lot of nostalgic attachment to objects which I thought were important but do not miss.
It doesn't have to be all or nothing. I refactored :)
Elsewhere in my life, I don't have a lot - I think I only have two drawers full of clothing and perhaps a few books and stuff. I have considered downsizing, but pretty much cannot bring myself to give away so much stuff that brings me joy.
My wife is the same - she is an artist, and has two separate areas of the house set up as her studio. Each is filled with canvases, paint tubes, easels, wooden boards, and a myriad of other stuff she uses for her mixed media work. Without any of that, I don't think she would feel as fulfilled and engaged with life, nor have a conduit to de-stress from every day responsibilities.
Tools (lots of them), art, and furniture (we buy mid-century designer).
Everything else is trash. Why do we keep trash? Why do we buy trash?
Because the sad simple truth is that buying trash, using it until it breaks and then buying a new one often makes more financial sense than trying to buy quality.
12 years ago I bought the best quality TV I could afford. And while it still works perfectly, it's objectively worse in just about every way then a current TV costing 20% of what I paid for it. However since it was so expensive and still works I cannot really bring myself to replace it.
For many of those, I would build up and hold on to things because I thought they'd be valuable some day, or maybe future kids/grandkids would benefit from having something handed down. I also like history and really enjoy seeing antique craftsmanship.
Even though stuff like the Beanie Baby craze crested and fell pretty quickly, you still have shows like Antiques Roadshow and Pawn Stars that show all of those hidden gems. Or, in the coin world, you'd read about some trove of uncirculated buffalo nickels being discovered in an attic somewhere. Or, if you ever go to the Andy Warhol museum, there's a whole section dedicated to his "time capsules" of collected mundane stuff, much of which ends up providing some kind of historical value.
When I was a kid, no one told me about putting money into mutual funds and compound interest (or if they did I didn't listen), let alone the principle of survivorship bias. Besides, that stuff is boring compared to the Star Wars Episode I Pez collection and commemorative Pepsi cans[1]. If I had held on to my 20 our of 24 opened cans, maybe I could have sold them for 30 bucks or so!
I've been having a lot of reality checks as I get older. I kept my Star Wars prequel novelizations in good condition, but I can also get a book in similar condition on Amazon for 5 or 6 bucks. And I never read my parents' favorite fiction books, so there's a solid chance that my kids won't care either. Maybe in the midst of getting rid of these things I'll get rid of the one thing that could be worth thousands in a generation or two, but that's like playing the lottery, isn't it?
[1]: www.ebay.com/itm/Star-Wars-Episode-1-Exclusive-Pepsi-Display-Collectors-Item-Set-of-24-Cans-/253064909025
Then, as programming became more and more of a 'day job' and not a fun side project, I found myself getting rid of the clutter of obsolete equipment around the place. 35 years later, I am happy with just a basic iMac as my main development machine, and a Lenovo laptop as my Windows/backup development machine. That is it. No more multi screen setups or fancy keyboards & mice even - just stock standard stuff to get the job done so I can spend energy on my passion projects.
2. Technology stuff I had is far smaller (think transition from CRT to LCD screens).
3. I cant afford anywhere NEAR the size property that my parents would have so the number of actual furniture items I can own is already significantly reduced, and this in turn includes available storage space.
So, they don't want to own big homes, or at all. Smaller homes (probably condos) means less stuff.
Well, and my dad's old circular slide rule from his college days.
Are you going to do that when your house is on fire?
My two observations:
1. The economic price for someone to take a month off to move and rearrange a sizeable household is nontrivial.
2. That someone would desire to spent the rest of their days in a big house full of stuff is foreign to me. This is the generational divide.
The formation of a estate filled with physical possessions is a prime driver for a lot of older folks. The younger set isn't so interested in that.
My ideal retirement: a bed, a desk, and a laptop in a small flat on the left bank in Paris.
This is going to have a big impact on several industries. In the future, fine furniture and china manufacturers are going to look like furriers today.
My family is another story. My dad is a collector of all sorts of things: vintage toys, LGB trains, 1930s radios, fine guitars... He has a 40' long storage unit just full of stuff. I dread the day we have to deal with it all.
I will say that for those of us who have to help our families go through this, be prepared for your family trying to "gift" things that are important to them on to you and when you decline because you do not want more stuff you may be accused of having no sentimentality. I went through this with my parents and I simply had to hold my ground. I accepted two things that did hold special meaning to me, but all other items I declined. I refused to allow their things to become my obligation to house for the next several decades.
My kids jokingly lament the need to go through it after I die. Meh... At least it is organized. I kinda like the idea of leaving them a giant task. Much of it is nominally valuable. They will be busy for quite a while. This makes me smile. Knowing them, they will enjoy it as well.
Take that last one to heart, and think of how it's not just a big task for your kids, but it's a really emotionally difficult and painful one for them as well.
I'm leaving them significant wealth. They might as well do something to earn it.
They might not be joking, I'm dreading dealing with my parents estate when they go and that's just one house.
So much so that he even dumped old baby photos of me and photos of my Grandfather -- served in the British Indian Army during World War II in Burma -- and many other rare family photos.
I was pretty mad at him for that, but I guess this means I don't have to deal with "stuff" when he passes, esp. given I live in the US and he lives in India.
The digital versions take up almost no space at all, and then you will be free to get rid of the old boxes of albums!
So far, I've been thankful. I've been going through my own backlog of crap and it's been great. I have to imagine it's been similar for my father and my sister.
My father's goal is no have as little bullshit for me and my sibling to sort through as possible when he dies. To me, this is great. Not that I hate my father or whatever, but that he wants as small a Death Footprint as possible. So do I for other reasons.
Such conversations are good to have.
In one way, it was great that we didn't have to sort it all out and deal with it, but in another, there were some things (like my dad's golf clubs and the family piano) that I would dearly have liked to hold on to because of the intense good memories those items represented to me (mum taught me to play piano on that particular instrument, and I have very cherished memories of playing golf with my dad when he used that set).
Now I am in the same bind, as I look around at all my stuff, including a collection of 30+ guitars that I have built up over the years. I've told my sons (who are both musical by the way) that they will inherit them when I am gone, but NOT to hold on to them as obsessively as I have. I explained to them that if it will help them to pay for studies, or buy a car/house etc. that they need, they should feel no hesitation in selling any and all of it as they see fit - there is no emotional obligation to them to hang on to 'stuff' unless they actually feel an emotional connection to do so.
At one stage, I even considered being buried with one of my favourite guitars, but then I thought 'No', it would do much better service above ground if they can use or sell it instead.
I suppose if the time came when I could not play any more due to age/illness etc. then I might do that, and give them the chance to choose a couple that they might want to keep after I am gone (they are both good guitar players in their own right).
So maybe the answer is to put everything in long-term storage, then skip a generation and wait till it becomes cool again :)
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/want-happiness-buy-experienc...
Some quick tips:
- Pictures with people are much more fun to look at later in life than landscapes, unless you're an amazing landscape photographer of course!
- Get off the tourist bus when visiting foreign countries. Walk the city. Pop your head into a local shop. Try that weird doughy thing, it might be tasty. Be almost late for your train - very exciting.
- Climb the stairs of the Eiffel Tower (ugh, it's tough, but I remember it) then have wine and cheese in the park on the lawn to cap it off.
Relating to too many things, I have 5 large moving boxes of photo albums from my parents along and a few trinkets here and there. Fortunately me and my siblings had no arguments in the distribution or tossing of just about everything. The photo albums are being scanned slowly but surely.
Think I need to drop some subtle hints...
Plus they're cool parents...they wouldn't want to burden me. I'm just conscious of the fact that they plan to move from a very big house to a not big house. Meanwhile there are boxes that haven't been unpacked from the 2001 move. They're not hoarders...they just have too much crap.
Where I grew up we had space to grow out. This means our two stall garage became a place for storage, pack ratting. Some of it good but a lot of it.. Eh?
I have to admit this meant that there was never a shortage of tools but this also meant that during my father's passing I had to decompress and sort all of it. Some of it is packratted in my own three stall garage now.
Having a trait to collect myself it is hard to tell when you are going overboard.
Some things like early Nintendo games paid handsomely to keep about. Others like well worn copies of B rate VHS movies? Not so much. The advancement in movie quality made from very high grade studio masters was easy to see if you had technical knowledge in that area but the growth in perceived value for other things is hard to gauge. Growing up with the room to store what you like meant a lot of oddball stuff got packed away.
I'm trying to be more selective with what I pack than my father before me.. But hell, some things I'm going to keep just cause I like them.
The only reference points and influences people had were socializing with others and 3 TV channels. No internet, facebook, instagram or twitter.
In todays culture you can find nearly any group you want to associate with online. You won't feel like an outcast and if you live in a populated enough area you can probably find like-minded people. I think with this available, if you see your neighbors have new fine china (new fancy car, or whatever) and that isn't your thing, you pretty much don't care.
My grandfather was a uranium physicist for the Atomic Energy Commission and I grabbed as much related memorabilia as I could. They are currently stored in a secure barn attic but I want to get them out. But, actually do want to test them for radioactivity lol. Anybody know about this?
Perhaps buy a radiation tester? https://smile.amazon.com/GQ-GMC-300E-Plus-Radiation-dosimete...
He was telling me that self-storage will be great investment, with all the old people moving to smaller retirement homes and villages, they need a place to store all their stuff.
I also believe that we're instinctively attracted to the act of fiddling; while yesterday we needed a lot of physical things to appease this instinct, we can content ourselves with an App store, with grooming our computers, phones, emails, social profiles, etc.
I hope to find a charity who would take everything and use what they want/can and get rid of the rest. There are valuable things and non-valuable ones, I do not want anything (I love my parents but am not attached to material things and do not like souvenirs)
My wifes parents are like this. Their house is filled, to the brim, with so much stuff. They have a few storage units full of stuff.
It will be an interesting problem for my wife and her siblings when the inevitable occurs.