The Untouchable Economy: Why Americans Are Turning Against 'Stuff'

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/the-untouchable-economy-why-americans-are-turning-against-stuff/261652/

by jseliger • 14 years ago

41 60 14 years ago

theatlantic.com

jseliger2• 14 years ago

Compare this to pg's essay "Stuff": http://paulgraham.com/stuff.html:

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars.

Evbn• 14 years ago

PG should look at a city sometime.

People with junk cars can't afford to ditch them, not can afford to have more cars than rick people.

saraid216• 14 years ago

Actually, what happens is that poor people are afraid to discard their unneeded stuff, because its modicum value is still value. Whereas in the middle class, at the end of the day, 90% of the stuff you have can be thrown away because you can be mostly confident that you can buy it again if you find out you needed it after all.

Most of what us non-poor people can't throw away is either sentimental, rare, or a major investment (a pool in your backyard, for instance) that can't be easily recouped.

In short, if you feel that you have a choice in the matter, that's what wealth is.

throwaway19792• 14 years ago

1-877-kars4kids

http://www.kars4kids.org/

Heh ... when I was a poor grad student, my old car died while I was far away doing an internship. I was freaked out when I saw how much some companies charged to dispose of the non-working cars. Then, I came across this charity.

In my case, I ended up getting the car to work again. Yay!

mindcrime4• 14 years ago

I've now stopped accumulating stuff. Except books—but books are different. Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books, whereas if you owned several thousand random possessions you'd be a local celebrity. But except for books, I now actively avoid stuff.

I don't know... I own on the order of thousands of books (don't have an exact number, can't be bothered to count / catalog them all), and it can be fairly inconvenient, depending on the circumstances. In my own case, I own more books than can comfortably fit in my apartment, which means one of the biggest motivations I have to rent a bigger apartment, or buy a house, is to suit my books. And since my books have long since overflowed the amount of shelf space I have available, they wind up stacked up around the place, which gives my place a cluttered feel.

Moving is also a bitch with all these books. Books can be friggin' heavy.

That said, I still mostly agree with pg that books are different from random "stuff." I treasure my books (well, ok, maybe not that copy of "OLE DB Programming in C++") and figure having too many books is far less severe a sin than, say, a crack cocaine addiction.

jseliger2• 14 years ago

I own more books than can comfortably fit in my apartment, which means one of the biggest motivations I have to rent a bigger apartment

I know the feeling, but a friend showed me the Container Store's "Elfa" shelving, which is pretty easy to install and provides seven to eight individual shelves in a particular space.

You can see a picture of my setup midway down this page: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/january-2012-links...

geebee• 14 years ago

I agree with you about the burden of moving books. In that sense, they do carry the baggage of "stuff".

However, I don't put books in to the same category of visual clutter. When I look at a messy room or garage, overflowing with stuff, it makes me unhappy. Even after it's better organized, I still feel a little unhappy realizing that so much storage space is taken up by stuff.

Books do feel different. I enjoy seeing them, the sight of a lot of books is actually a little relaxing. They don't stress me out the way other kinds of stuff does.

Sounds like you have a lot of books stacked around... I could see how it might get to the point where you're feeling cluttered. And the main reason I like getting books from the library isn't so much that I don't have to pay for it but that I don't have to find a place to put it after I'm done.

stephengillie3• 14 years ago

I don't hold books in any special regard anymore. Now, they're just large objects that hold data less efficiently than other solutions. I can keep the text on a HDD or flash drive somewhere instead.

They're large, heavy, cumbersome objects. They're just more objects to be packed, carried, and worried about.

sopooneo2• 14 years ago

I grew up in a poor rural area where lots of people (including lots of wonderful families) had broken cars in their yards. In case anyone is baffled by this, the main reason is that they can be mined for spare parts--for you or your neighbor. It's about holding onto a hundred things because you don't know which one is going to be useful and the storage cost is essentially zero. If you are well off then the price of spare parts isn't a concern, so it's worth it to you to have a clean yard.

stephengillie3• 14 years ago

This blurb (relative to TheAtlantic's other articles) sounds like a response to The Cheapest Generation

(Discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4421897)

debacle• 14 years ago

The first three words of the article are a link to that article.

neverm0re4• 14 years ago

For fifteen years, I've been at a point in my belongings that I can pack and move out of a place in hours. Why hang onto all this stuff? Why spend on all these things we don't need? Why not be flexible?

At this point everything I own fits into my car. Everything. I've moved from city to city while telecommuting because I could and in fact, on average I move to a new city every two years if not quicker. Stuff just glues you into place and most of it is rubbish anyway, it won't make you feel any more fulfilled or complete.

I'd rather have experiences.

ZanderEarth322• 14 years ago

This works in theory, and in practice for some people, but not everyone. For example, I don't have a lot of 'stuff' but I do have a couple of hobbies that require 'stuff' like rock climbing and backpacking. My girlfriend who lives with me is an avid scrapbooker, which inherently means she will have a lot of stuff.

It's easy to not have 'stuff' if your entire life is online, but once you start to accumulate hobbies that aren't online then not having stuff gets much more difficult.

My goal is to not have stuff that doesn't serve a purpose. Nic-nacks, gifts from trips, decorations, etc.

Retric2• 14 years ago

You can put a lot of stuff in a car. I have a fair amount of snowboarding stuff for example, but it does not actually take up all that much space. Camping is probably a better example, you can have an insane amount of camping stuff or a backpack full, but quality dominates quantity.

neverm0re4• 14 years ago

That's pretty dismissive of you to assume you know anything about me or my hobbies, actually. A lot of things such as my books and music were converted digitally, but I actually have an entire recording studio setup and my gardening supplies to move as well. If anything I spend a lot of my time avoiding online activities. You can learn to cram a lot into minimalism, not everyone is the hapless nerdotron you seem to think they are.

jaggederest4• 14 years ago

A good bed? I'm not aware of any that you can pack in a car that won't give you back problems in the long term.

will_work4tears5• 14 years ago

A sleeping bag and a foam roll. Seriously. I did this for years and was fine. Probably just an IME, but I've found that back problems are an issue of being out of shape (low muscle mass) or over usage (bad job, poor ergonomics, etc) and never caused from not sleeping on a bed. If I lift weights or otherwise in shape I can sleep on anything. When I'm out of shape I tend to get back pains from just about anything that isn't perfect.

cletus• 14 years ago

This resonates with me. Frankly I'm tired of owning "stuff". All I really need is a place to sleep, a laptop, a tablet, a phone and clothes. I'll get limited furniture but it'll be cheap Ikea stuff that I'll simply dispose of when I move.

I don't own a TV. In fact I doubt I'll ever own a TV again. Nor do I own a big sound system. I do own a table and chairs, a sofa and a desk. All but the desk I regret.

One thing that frustrates me no end is the one-dimensional nature of the housing and construction markets.

It seems that inner cities are (generally) expensive. Places are smaller, typically older and definitely more expensive per square meter. The further you go out, the places don't tend to get much cheaper (until you're really far out). They generally just get bigger.

Take Manhattan. I live downtown in a walkup. I could live across the Hudson in Jersey City. I'd pay slightly less but I'd have a much bigger and nicer place. But what if I just want a small place? Doesn't seem to exist.

Whenever this issue comes up I'm always reminded of the line from Fight Club:

The things you own end up owning you. [1]

It's totally true. I see a lot of posts (on mailing lists) from people moving to NYC. It typically starts out "I/we need a 2 bedroom apartment". Reasons vary. Sometimes it's for their "stuff". Sometimes they "need" an office. Sometimes they've simply never had smaller.

You can have that in the city but you'll be paying a fortune or living further out. The tradeoff is more apparent here than most places and it really forces people to make choices. Some cling to their stuff. Some don't.

[1] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes

yequalsx• 14 years ago

I reached the same conclusion as you in January. I've since walked away from my mortgage on a two bedroom place in the burbs and bought an efficiency condo in downtown. I paid cash and in retrospect realize that my need for a two bedroom place was not well founded. I don't have kids and am not married so a two bedroom place wasn't necessary. Right now all of my expenses to live in my efficiency is 10% less than what my mortgage payment was.

I think the message of society (and by this I mean media and advertising) is that more is better. There tends to be a glorification of buying stuff merely for the object of buying stuff. "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" was ahead of its time in this regard. Now we have all kinds of such shows. I fell into the trap of going along with this type of thinking but have since seen the way in which my subconscious was manipulated.

The keeping up with the Jonses mentality is real and it's hard to step back and ask, "Why is this necessary?"

bunderbunder• 14 years ago

The things you own end up owning you.

I think that stuff might be the single biggest source of stress in my life.

Not acute stress - it's not like I'm underwater on a loan or anything like that. Just a sort of constant low-grade 'micro-stress' that comes from always having to look at a cluttered living space and never being able to find that thing I'm looking for.

stephengillie3• 14 years ago

For most of my life, I've been able to fit all of my possessions within my car, and move in one trip. Recently I've upgraded from a 20" monitor to a 46" tv. This means I'm up to 2 car trips.

It's frustrating to move entirely into a new place, and find that the place looks empty and plain because you simply don't have enough objects to fill the place. In a way, it reminds me of dieting: I hate having to eat like an anorexic American just to look like a healthy Human, and I hate feeling like I need to fill my residence with objects just to feel at home there.

I want to live in a nice ~400 sqft apartment in a city. But those don't seem to exist. I want to pay less than $600 a month for rent, but apparently I earn two times too much to pay so little. So I'm stuck paying too much for a too-big place which feels awkwardly too empty.

danmaz74• 14 years ago

Wouldn't it be possible to buy a bigger apartment, create two smaller ones from it, and then sell one of the two?

munin• 14 years ago

I'm pretty sure that when Palahniuk wrote that, his identification for 'stuff' included digital content and other non-tangibles. Great, you don't have a lot of stuff. how would you feel if your gmail went away tomorrow? bad? looks like stuff still owns you!

vidar• 14 years ago

This is a great perspective that will have to be learned the hard way by digital hoarders.

pavel_lishin• 14 years ago

> It typically starts out "I/we need a 2 bedroom apartment". Reasons vary. Sometimes it's for their "stuff". Sometimes they "need" an office. Sometimes they've simply never had smaller.

Sometimes I work until midnight, while my partner likes to sleep without hearing me, or seeing the light from my monitor.

sliverstorm2• 14 years ago

Ikea furniture sucks. If it's what you can afford, well, it's still functional- but if you can afford better, I've come to feel like good furniture is worth some extra stress.

chrisaycock• 14 years ago

> Ikea furniture sucks.

Screenwriter John August says that Ikea's motto should be, "for now, it'll do".

deltaqueue• 14 years ago

Ikea wasn't always so bad; consumers just never changed buying habits when their quality went down, and when Ikea realized they didn't have many competitors in the "low to medium quality" space.

Exhibit A: 6-10 year old Jerker desk (no idea of age, bought 4 years ago on CL) is one of the solidest pieces of furniture I've ever purchased.

bergie2• 14 years ago

When we moved from Helsinki to Berlin last spring, we took the opportunity to get rid of all the accummulated cruft, mostly by giving things away either to friends or charity. A strict regime of no books, no physical media, etc

In the end the "stuff" needed for living by two software developers boiled down to: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bergie/7662550710/in/set-721576...

(ok, on top of this there were two motorcycles that we rode over when the snows melted)

The weird thing about the move, however, is that thanks to Berlin rental situation, the flat we have there is bigger than what I ever had in Finland. While flats tend to come furnished, the place still seems very, very empty.

Given that we both have about two blocks of commute, the motorcycles are "unnecessary". But they certainly are fun on weekends.

swah• 14 years ago

I feel the same, I could live under the stairs if I lived in NY.

personlurking• 14 years ago

There was an article that appeared on HN probably earlier this year about a guy who said he was a minimalist and only owned 15 things (apparently this included "toiletries" as one thing). If my clothes are one thing, then I basically own 3 things (MBA, clothes and cell phone) and it all fits in two suitcases which I take with me as I move about S. America.

Having a second suitcase on Brazilian airlines means paying a pretty penny which usually equals the cost of the flight itself. It was only yesterday that I realized that it's possible what goes in that second suitcase is not worth the second suitcase fee. Keep in mind, I've already paid 300-400US in fees for it at this point with just 3 moves.

Just because you are a minimalist doesn't mean you own the correct few items (correct for you). It's oddly easy to forget this.

zwieback• 14 years ago

The stuff equation changes once you have kids. Cars and appartments get bigger and stuff accumulates. Luckily you can live on a lot of hand-me-downs that get handed down again but at our house there are also continuous trips to Goodwill to get rid of stuff.

bergie2• 14 years ago

I'm seeing the when you have kids argument a lot in these threads. It seems to be a big assumption a in world where many don't want to or can't have kids.

Purely anecdotal, but it seems those who want kids tend to make more than one or two of them, while many do not procreate. This leaves very little incentive for living in the suburbia.

apike• 14 years ago

My wife and I of this generation, but it wasn't any economic conditions that inspired our dislike of "stuff". For me it was watching our parents' generation be driven further and further into the suburbs by the process of buying stuff and needing space for that stuff.

Realizing that the space for furniture and other crap costs much more than the purchase price has made a big improvement in our lives.

noonespecial• 14 years ago

We sold all of our stuff, moved out of our 5000 sq ft "McMansion" near DC and spent a year wandering the country exploring "the spaces in-between". We lived in a trailer that I could pull behind my pickup and all of our possessions fit in the back of said pickup.

It was intensely liberating. Sadly as soon as we settled down again, the stuff started acreting like barnacles. Our plan is to repeat the process on a semi-regular basis.

InclinedPlane• 14 years ago

I like having stuff, stuff can be important, and enabling. The trick is having a good filter. If you just collect crap, or status items, or knick knacks, you're just going to be stressed trying to keep track of it all. If you build up a collection of stuff that lets you do things, then that's very different.

I have stuff that enables me to cook delicious meals. And I have stuff that enables me to travel. And stuff that I can use to climb mountains or hike in the wilderness. And stuff that I can use to fix things like bicycles and cars and computers.

"Stuff" can be either good or bad. Don't collect crap, but there's nothing wrong with collecting tools that you use regularly or art that you appreciate.

axcdnt• 14 years ago

I think you got the point! I truly agree. Hobbies are for life, for self-esteem and usually allow us to make some money. One point I'd like to emphasize is: Having stuffs and spending some time looking for it, enables you to create some expertise knowledge and make "business", why not?

will_work4tears5• 14 years ago

I hate stuff too, but fell in love with a woman that, while she isn't a materialist, tends to want the typical amount of stuff. And now that we own a home, presents tend to be tools, and they are sometimes used, sometimes not.

Frankly, I'd love to cast it off and throw it away, but I'm afraid she'd not let me, lol. I love her more than I hate stuff though.

xradionut• 14 years ago

I was living in a very, very small apartment until I got a partner. Now we are married, we have a small house with very little storage room for stuff. A slightly larger house would be nice, not for stuff, but so we could work from home without interruptions, entertain our large family and have a bit more room for tools and pets.

will_work4tears5• 14 years ago

Our house isn't huge, something like 1300 sqft. We don't live in BFE, but it is suburbs. My dream has always been more urban, small space but within walking distance to some cool places and public transit for those that are further away.

Having an office is nice though, I don't think I could concentrate if I had to work on stuff in the living room while she watched Glee.

mullingitover• 14 years ago

"But Millennials may approach the decision about how many children to have, and how to educate them, with more of a business approach. Will this cause the number of children to rise or to fall? Children are a heavy investment, especially given the cost of college these days..."

Children...an investment? Oh, I lol'd. Children aren't an investment, unless by investment you mean 'cash bonfire.'

sopooneo2• 14 years ago

"[Millenials have] seen home prices collapse unexpectedly, leaving millions of people with immense debts."

I have to quibble with this. Regardless of the resale value of your home, the balance on your mortgage is the same.

The Untouchable Economy: Why Americans Are Turning Against 'Stuff'

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