No Thanks, I'm Stuffed!

We spend our lives getting stuff. But why? asks Kim Peckham. After all, we can’t take it with us.

My wife just got back from the mall, and now I can safely say that we have enough stuff. Before today an argument could have been made that we needed more stuff. After all, there was a patch of empty space on top of the refrigerator. But now we have reached TSS (total stuff saturation).

The key indicator of TSS is when you commit to living in the same house for the rest of your life because the idea of packing everything for a move causes your breath to come in short gasps, as it did the time you found out your boss can access all your old emails.

Let’s imagine that tomorrow I get a phone call from someone saying, “Hey, Kim, we’ve got a job for you in Hawaii. We’ll pay you $90,000 a year to evaluate the cooking in fine restaurants.”

My reply would be “Thanks, but physicists have warned us that moving our stuff will cause the world to tilt out of balance. I wouldn’t feel right putting my career above the safety of the planet.”

One of the great tensions in our society—besides the tension between our desire to help local schools raise money and our ambivalence toward cheap chocolate—is the tension between wanting more stuff and not having a place to put it.

According to the US National Association of Home Builders, the size of the average home in the US has increased by some 75 m2 (800 square feet) since 1970, mostly, I assume, because people need more space to store their Thailand souvenirs and stuffed-bear collections.

My wife accumulates stuff because she’s a sentimental soul. She has hung on to her grandmother’s cheese grater, a King Solomon-sized family of Barbie dolls and even some old tissues left behind by tearful guests at our wedding.

This makes me think that every home should have a museum wing where you can keep objects from your past. You could give tours and explain, “Here’s a display of Valentine cards I received in third grade. Here is Jennifer’s old teeth brace. And this exhibit is dedicated to unflattering pictures of my husband and his former schoolmates.”

I don’t have anything against memorabilia, but I guess what I’m trying to say is: I don’t need any more stuff!

This declaration makes me feel strong and unencumbered by the things of this world. At least until I see a Circuit City; then I can’t wait to be encumbered by the latest product from sweet, sweet Sony.

For a while I thought garage sales would be the answer. I could exchange unwanted stuff around our house for cash, which, unlike a collection of old Avon bottles, is wanted around our house. Then I spent two rainy days at a group yard sale and made $20—half of which I spent buying stuff from other people at the sale.

The battle never ends. There is too much stuff in the world, all of it heaping up in our homes like leaves piling up, like dead frogs in the Egyptian plague.
Of course, things have changed since the time of the Pharaohs. Now we’ve learned that you can’t take it with you.
And what a relief!

Reprinted, with permission, from Women of Spirit.

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