Tuesday, April 12, 2016

"Houston....we have a problem"


We kind of have a lot of stuff.

You might not believe it but we're rich....and can buy a lot of stuff.

And then we buy more stuff. 
and more
and more.

And then we can't get rid of it.

And our stuff overtakes our lives.
And we're grumpy about it.

Houston....we have a PROBLEM.....
and we're not quite sure what to do about it.




We try to give our stuff away....


or sell it for REALLY cheap....

but everyone has the same problem as us. 

They have too much stuff too.





Did you know?
1. There are 300,000 items in the average American home (LA Times).
2. The average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years (NPR).
3. Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items. We lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime including sunglasses, phones, keys, and paperwork (The Daily Mail).
4. 25% of people with two-car garages don’t have room to park cars inside them and 32% only have room for one vehicle. (U.S. Department of Energy).
5. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks. (SSA).
6. British research found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily (The Telegraph).
7. The average American woman owns 30 outfits—one for every day of the month. In 1930, that figure was 9 (Forbes).
8. The average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing per year (Huffington Post).
9. Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches ($100 billion) than on higher education (Psychology Today).

10. Shopping malls outnumber high schools. And 93% of teenage girls rank shopping as their favorite pastime (Affluenza).
(from www.becomingminimalist.com)

HOUSTON....we have a PROBLEM!

We are rich. 
And we buy a LOT of stuff.

And it fills up our houses and garages and spaces.

And then sometimes we pay to put our stuff in "junk jail" (aka a storage unit) and go visit it every once in a while....and try to figure out how to get it out of there...and pay a lot of money every month to keep it, just in case we might ever need it and can find a place in our home for it.

And it's not just a stuff problem.
It's an economic problem.

We buy books at Costco for $24.99 and then can't sell them for $1 to the used bookstore.



We buy jeans at the mall for our teenage son for $90 and then Goodwill can't sell them for $3.99.



We buy stuffed animals at Sea World or Disneyland for $30 and then can't GIVE THEM AWAY at our neighborhood yard sale.



But we are rich....and so we don't care. 
And we just keep buying it anyway.
And then wonder why we are drowning in stuff.

Houston....we have a PROBLEM!




2 comments:

  1. O.O what?! We are decluttering now. KonMari style. And I can see that we DO have a lot even though we try to live a minimalistic lifestyle. I don't know if I could get down to 9 outfits but I would like to not spend 153 days searching for things! Can't wait to finish dejunking! Looking forward to some organizing tips from you too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. O.O what?! We are decluttering now. KonMari style. And I can see that we DO have a lot even though we try to live a minimalistic lifestyle. I don't know if I could get down to 9 outfits but I would like to not spend 153 days searching for things! Can't wait to finish dejunking! Looking forward to some organizing tips from you too!

    ReplyDelete