We take nothing with us, and leave it all behind. Obituaries note that people left behind their spouses, children, grandkids, friends, and even their pets. Obituaries do not include sentences like: “John leaves behind his collection of model train set” or that “Jane left behind books that covered her living room walls.” The highlighting of what was left behind, and the omission from the obituaries the materials that they owned, says a lot about what is important in life, does it not?
We all know this. Every one of us knows that the favorite toy or heirloom is not what we take with us when we take that final breath. If anything, maybe we take our memories with us. But then there is no evidence that the departed leave with their cherished Rosebud memories. After all, there is no exit interview during the final and permanent exit.
Yet, our homes are full of stuff. Memes boast that the one with the most toys wins. Our garages overflow with stuff. Garages are so stuffed with stuff that there is no place to park the car, which is then condemned to life on the street. Such is life in an age of affluence!
Maybe I am obsessive-compulsive about having an uncluttered surrounding. Getting rid of stuff comes easy to me. A few years ago, when my parents were preparing to move from their home to my sister’s, I was given the task of decluttering. I told them I was well qualified for this task. Once you throw out a wife, everything else is easy, I joked. Neither my joke nor my getting rid of stuff appealed to them ;)
In the new year, I suppose some people would have resolved to declutter their homes, which is why NPR and NYT have devoted time and space to this issue. NPR frames it as a “decluttering philosophy”:
[No] one wants to live in a surplus store, you know? We want to feel personal. So what you want is that when you open that door, when you go underneath the bed, there's something that just makes you feel happy and peaceful and recognize yourself. Because when you decorate or when you kind of personalize a space, it stops you from adding more clutter. There's something about it that we won't kind of defile an area if we feel an endearment to it.
An uncluttered and well organized and decorated home can make one peaceful and happy, yes. A cluttered home, on the other hand:
A messy home can also contribute to feelings of overwhelm, stress and shame, making you feel worse than you already do. And while decluttering will not cure your depression, it can give you a mood boost.
I suppose it is through stuff that some try to make meaning out of their existence. Whatever makes one sane in this world, to each their own: “nobody else will ever enjoy your clutter quite the way you do. … Because the objects you already own are much more likely to be interwoven with the people and experiences that give life meaning.”
I am not in any way convinced, however, that the stuff that I have gives my life meaning. It does not make sense that we work long hours and earn a lot (compared to the older traditional ways of living) not for mere survival but to get more stuff.
We consume a lot. We buy things we need, we want, we don't need, and we don't want. We have grown addicted to stuff, and getting rid of this addiction is impossible it seems.
Consumption is what the modern economy is all about, once we got beyond basic survival. Such a worry about consumption and economic growth is not new. In graduate school, I learnt about the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth. This report came out when I had barely started elementary school! Decades later, we continue to worry about the consequences of growth and consumption.
Whether we live in apartments or mansions, we Americans collect a whole lot of worthless crap. A few years ago, I wrote in Planetizen:
Of course, as many of us have observed, but for which data don't exist, most homeowners seem to fill their garages with refrigerators, freezers, bicycles, treadmills, etc., and then park their cars on the driveways or by the curb. When things have to be put away, households find that they have more stuff for which they need additional space, which is where the self-storage business comes in.
A few days after my new neighbors moved in a couple of years ago, I was sweeping my garage with the door open, of course. My neighbors saw me, and in that very American way jokingly commented about the vast empty space and that maybe they could store some of their stuff in my garage.
Surely, at some point, every one needs to ask themselves, “what is it all for?"
Take a look around the room where you are while reading this. What meaningless stuff are you ready to throw out or donate? What is your philosophy of cluttering and decluttering?