
The Untouchable Economy: Why Americans Are Turning Against 'Stuff' - jseliger
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/the-untouchable-economy-why-americans-are-turning-against-stuff/261652/
======
cletus
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>

~~~
sliverstorm
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
> Ikea furniture sucks.

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

~~~
throwaway1979
I've owned Ikea or similar grade furniture for most of my life. It actually
bothers me that I have to keep re-buying the same things over and over again.
It just seems very wasteful.

Non-Ikea furniture often seems horribly overpriced. I think there is a
furniture store in Mountain View that sells $1000+ shelves or coffee tables.
You'd think there is a middle ground.

~~~
sliverstorm
I'm sure there used to be! But the introduction of the bargain option heavily
polarized the market.

My solution has centered around two items; taking advantage of great sales at
my preferred high-quality furniture retailer, and only going with the high-
quality units for specific pieces of furniture.

------
InclinedPlane
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
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?

------
neverm0re
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.

~~~
ZanderEarth32
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.

~~~
Retric
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.

~~~
ZanderEarth32
That's true and I could fit all my camping and climbing stuff in my car, but
the picture I get from people who tout "all my stuff fits in my car"
philosophy is that they live in a room with no furniture, a coffee mug and
their laptop. Having less stuff for the sake of having less stuff doesn't seem
to really serve a purposes. Keep what you need and want and ditch the rest.
Not that complicated.

------
jseliger
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._

~~~
mindcrime
_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.

~~~
jseliger
_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...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2012/01/10/january-2012-links-
rejection-by-literary-agents-parking-trade-offs-altucher-confidential-the-
video-game-hypothesis-macbook-airs-and-more)

~~~
mindcrime
Cool stuff. My problem is, I don't really have more wall space for shelves.
The two remaining walls that would make good candidates for shelving, I use
for hanging whiteboards. :-)

That said, I _could_ get rid of some of these books... especially older tech
books that aren't relevant, either because they're plain out of date, or
because I've made a conscious decision to move away from that technology, or
both. For example, I have a lot of older books on various Microsoft / Windows
technologies like COM, DCOM, ADO, OLE, etc. Frankly, it's very unlikely I'll
ever use that stuff again.

~~~
Retric
I would suggest dumping all but the very best tech books and buying them again
if you actually need them. Sure, they cost's 50$ a pop, but for most tech
people that's not really an issue.

<http://my.safaribooksonline.com/>

~~~
mindcrime
Yeah, good point. And I am (slowly) starting to transition more and more to
e-books. I by dead-tree tech books much less often than I did back in, say,
2001.

> <http://my.safaribooksonline.com>

I'm definitely thinking about signing up for a Safari subscription soon.

------
will_work4tears
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
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_work4tears
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.

------
apike
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.

------
personlurking
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.

------
mullingitover
"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.'

------
zwieback
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.

~~~
bergie
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.

------
noonespecial
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.

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

------
sopooneo
"[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.

