

Stuff - Paul Graham - samb
http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html
Too much stuff is a bad thing. Everything I owned in 2000 would fit in the back of my station wagon. If it wouldn't fit in the wagon, it was out. Now I'm married, and covered up with stuff. When you get married, it's custom for people to give you more stuff. Most of it you don't need. Or want. But you can't just throw it away, after all, it's free stuff. (Sorry if this has already been posted, I didn't see it in the list and can't search....)
======
nostrademons
"How do you protect yourself from these people? It can't be easy. I'm a fairly
skeptical person, and their tricks worked on me well into my thirties."

It's much easier to never get in the habit of buying things in the first
place. I remember two particular childhood events that dramatically shaped my
consumption habits:

In the first, I was 4 years old and in the toy section of Spag's (a discount
warehouse near Worcester), and _really_ wanted a new Transformers toy. My mom
said "Oh honey, we can't afford it. We can come back next month and get it."
And then ran over to take care of my sister, who was throwing a tantrum over
not being able to have a My Little Pony doll. I realized I could be the "good
child" by never asking for stuff. From then on, my parents and I had a tacit
agreement: they would buy me anything I wanted, and in return I wouldn't want
much. Lesson learned: sibling rivalry can be a powerful motivator.

For the second - my parents refused to let us watch any TV other than PBS
until they'd sat us down and told us about advertisements. And when they did,
the conversation was basically: "The commercials are just trying to sell you
something. They want to control your behavior, so that you'll go out and buy
what they want." I was 5 years old at the time and couldn't bear the idea of
anyone controlling my behavior. After all, it was bad enough when my parents
told me what to do. The idea that some nefarious marketing guy would reach
through the TV and make me spend money was just abhorrent. Lesson learned:
make marketers seem like parents, but with only the evil "You have to do
this!" parts and not the comforting take-care-of-you parts.

The end result of all this? I'm 26 years old and still using my high school
allowance for spending money. Essentially every penny I've ever earned has
gone into the bank and stayed there.

~~~
Caligula
Key to Karma(k2k)

1-Agree with postings

2-Anecdote from real life humanizing yourself by mixing in family

3-??

4-Profit!!

I kid I kid. I enjoy your posts but am unsure how a anti-consumer/anti-
corporate/anti-advertising posting is modded up so high on a entrepreneurial
board that guess what, mostly relies on advertising to generate revenue.

~~~
byrneseyeview
"a anti-consumer/anti-corporate/anti-advertising posting"

Saying "ignore manipulative ads" isn't anti-consumer. Nor is it anti-corporate
-- it just means, roughly, "Buy stuff when the focus is on creating something
valuable, not convincing you that something is valuable."

~~~
Caligula
The quote "ignore manipulative ads" is not in his post. His post appears to
demonize advertising in general.

Also, how can you say "Buy stuff when the focus is on creating something
valuable, not convincing you that something is valuable."

The context is totally dependant on who the individual is. Who is to stay
something is valuable to other people? It is the advertisements job to show to
the potential customer why the product is valuable.

Lastly, how does 'ignore manipulate ads' equate to 'buy stuff when the focus
is on creating something valuable, not convincing you that something is
valuable? That is quite the jump.

~~~
byrneseyeview
The quote is not in his post. I got the impression from "I have too much
stuff," followed by "Companies that sell stuff have spent huge sums training
us to think stuff is still valuable. But it would be closer to the truth to
treat stuff as worthless." Is there some other meaning I could divine from
those statements?

"The context is totally dependant on who the individual is."

That's true. There's an information component to ads -- which is why I
advocated skepticism over censorship. But in general, if you have two
companies that are both pursuing a value-maximizing strategy selling the same
product, and one does ads, the other is going to have higher quality (have you
seen ads for McDonald's? Have you seen ads for, say, Beffa's
(<http://www.beffas.com/home.html>)?).

'Lastly, how does 'ignore manipulate ads' equate to 'buy stuff when the focus
is on creating something valuable, not convincing you that something is
valuable? That is quite the jump."

If you don't spend the money, you either a) destroy it, b) save it, or c)
spend it on other stuff. If b), remember that saving is deferred spending, so
b) and c) are the same with different timing.

~~~
Caligula
Your quoting PG's essay. I was responding to the comment that mine is under. I
should not have responded as confrontation is bad on boards that could lead to
meeting others in real life.

Basically I found the comment that I commented on deceptive. It used anecdotes
from childhood claiming X is bad, then mentions full savings as if that is the
direct correlation between the two. I regret commenting in this thread and
will stick to more agreeable topics.

~~~
nostrademons
"It used anecdotes from childhood claiming X is bad, then mentions full
savings as if that is the direct correlation between the two."

I actually believe there _is_ a direct correlation - anecdotes (sometimes)
lead to habits, and then habits lead to savings. It's much easier to form
habits in childhood, which is why I picked childhood anecdotes. But it can be
done late in life too - I think that was part of the point of PG's essays.

~~~
Caligula
You are doing it again. You try to make a point but suddenly mention an
irrelevant point that is correct but unrelated to the argument you are trying
to make.

Yes that is one of PG's themes(habits can be changed) but it does not relate
to believing that advertising is behavior control and holding this to be true
will lead to full savings.

------
geebee
I think we're in a transitional moment in history, where stuff has become
close to free but we're still locked into a mentality that values it. I don't
think it'll be much longer before we come around to realizing it.

Funny that Paul should mention kids. When my son was born, I was given a lot
of plastic toys that make noise. I've seen them on the shelves at ToysRUs, and
they are remarkably cheap.

Thing is, my parents and their friends (who are crossing 60 these days) came
of age at a time when a toy was a rare and expensive treat. They were
generally made in the US, and required a lot of capital and first world labor.
A large room full of toys was a sign of the very well to do. When they were
kids, a new toy was a truly wonderful gift, and so they continue to give them.

And yet their houses were relatively cheap relative to their incomes. For 20
and 30-ish people, the great financial challenge is housing, not plastic toys.
So stuff is very cheap, but a place to put that stuff is prohibitively
expensive.

I have a feeling my 2 year old would really enjoy a toy workbench. The item
itself is awfully cheap, and I could probably get one for $25 on craigslist,
but the real estate it's sitting on is worth about $2k.(I live in one of the
few remaining unfashionable blocks of San Francisco for the low low price of
about $650/sq ft- on nob or russian hill this workbench would probably cover
closer to $10k worth of floorspace).

So here's another way to test a purchase. Think about how much floor space the
item would cover, and ask yourself if it's worth the are*$/sqft.

~~~
geebee
just to add - I've noticed that most of the parents around my neighborhood now
buy and sell used toys very frequently, much more often than parents did when
I was a kid. This is partly because the web is much more efficient than the
newspaper, and it's cheaper to buy used. But the real benefit is that it gives
us the ability to essentially rent the toy. There's little doubt that I'm
going to end up with a plastic workbench, but my $50 is really more of a
deposit - a promise to take good enough care of it to pass it on to the next 2
year old.

------
edgeztv
When I was a kid growing up in the USSR, "stuff" was really important to
everyone because everything was really hard to get. Those who grew up in the
West can't possibly understand how valuable even the most insignificant stuff
seemed there. Petty theft was rampant. If you left a load of laundry
unattended you could come back and find even your socks missing.

The "stuff" mindset is very difficult for some people to break. Over the first
few years living in the US, my mother had accumulated more useless stuff than
most people who'd spent their whole lives here. After 15 years in the US, she
still worries about leaving her stuff in the laundromat.

I've been thinking about the subject a lot over the years and Paul's essay is
spot-on. The more money I make, the more I dislike "stuff". I hardly bought
anything since I started my first job after college. In contrast I used to buy
a fair amount of junk before. My room was always cluttered and I hated being
at home because I felt like the stuff drained all my energy.

It's true that stuff owns people and not the other way around. My neighbor in
Cambridge, MA keeps a backyard (more like a junkyard) full of used
construction materials and equipment, including 3 dead trucks. He spends every
single evening trying to straighten it out, but ends up just wheelbarrowing
stuff from place to place without any noticeable progress. I, on the other
hand, am now able to spend every evening working on my startup, and not having
stuff makes me feel great!

------
brianmckenzie
Starting a startup has led to big improvements for me in this area. Back when
I worked for other people I was constantly buying stuff. Oh, the
rationalizations I came up with for purchases of very dubious value. I felt
that I had to have every piece of the puzzle, only I didn't realize that the
puzzle can never be completed.

Now that I've gone out on my own I don't have the time or money to spend like
this anymore. It's such a change for the better.

Here are some stuff-reduction techniques I use:

Books: I have one large Ikea bookshelf. Several of the shelves are reserved as
a 'rotating collection' - when the shelf gets full, I make myself sell some
books on Amazon before I get new ones. The collection can never exceed the
capacity of the one decent-sized bookshelf.

Every August, I take an inventory of everything I own and how often I'm using
it. This includes books, clothes, office supplies, everything. Everything gets
divided into three categories based on usage: heavily used, not used at all,
and marginal. I keep everything in the 'heavily used' category. I sell, give
away, or throw away everything in the 'never used' category. Then, I make a
list of everything in the 'marginal' category and keep it until the next year.
If any given item is still 'marginal' the next year, I sell it.

You'd be surprised how effective this is. What's especially amazing is the
crazy stuff you can sell over the net - someone paid 50 bucks for a t-shirt I
hadn't worn in 15 years. Last year I made enough cash doing this to buy a new
Mac. The reduction in clutter is even better.

~~~
bluishgreen
An idea on top of this would be use the information that you gather from your
own "heavy use items", and buy more - or spend more on those. Get better
quality items. About the ones that you didn't use ever, when you get an urge
to buy them remind yourself of this pie chart that you made!

~~~
brianmckenzie
Absolutely! This past year I took the proceeds from all the lesser-used items
and bought one pricey, high-quality, heavy-use item. It has completely paid
off - I use the new computer (completely loaded iMac) constantly and it
positively blows away any other computer I've owned. It does more for me in
one week than all the junk I sold to buy it did for me in a year.

Which brings us to the subject of quality. I used to buy budget PC's - the
cheapest thing I could find that would run what I needed. What a mistake that
was. I have found that for heavy-use items it almost always pays to get the
best I can possibly afford. I'm more likely to use higher-quality stuff and it
performs better under heavy use.

There's a corollary to this: I have also found it preferable to buy the
cheapest available product if it's a marginal or lesser-used item. Like a
cheese grater or something. It's also good to question whether you need such
an item at all, as you point out.

------
paul
Procrastination works well for me. Instead of not buying stuff, I just put it
off until later, repeatedly.

In some ways, having money actually makes it easier to not accumulate stuff,
because you don't feel as pressured by "good deals".

------
kcl
Just a week or so ago I went through the process of getting rid of all my
stuff. My main reason for doing so wasn't to free up space in my room, it was
to free up space in my head. I'm down to approximately one suitcase full of
things---I even tossed out the empty suitcase. You start out with a huge
mental block against throwing things away, but every time you throw something
out you actually feel better, and the more things you throw out the easier it
becomes. Eventually I got down to the bare essentials: a toothbrush, a few
changes of clothes, and a lockbox full of important personal effects like my
passport and birth certificate. The things I didn't want to carry around but
couldn't bear to throw away I shipped to my parents' house. In fact, I shipped
one of the last boxes there this morning (old photographs, letters from
friends, postcards).

If you have to ship a lot of books---are you really going to need your Sipser
book anytime soon?---you can do it media mail for next to nothing.

This is something I've wanted to do for years and I can't tell you how
relieving it is to finally do it. I'd like to get down the level of the monk
with just a rice bowl, or a hobo with a sack tied to a stick, but really I
can't give up things like nail clippers and deodorant and razorblades, and
little things like that still manage to take up space. (How much? About
another laptop-case sized container.) Of course, it helps to have saved up
some money first so you know you could reacquire things if you turn out to
need them later. Luckily the process of saving for my startup has given me
enough to do that. When I was a student I could've never tossed out my
hairdryer...that's another thirty bucks. What if I grow my hair out again?
With a little money in your pocket you can let the drugstore keep all of these
things for you. Durable goods become disposable. America is totally geared for
this. Every time I moved I would go to Wal-Mart and buy a whole new collection
of silverware.

One of the rules I used to use was to inspect my stuff before moving it out of
an old place. If I hadn't used something in the previous year, chances are I
wasn't going to use it in the next, and I'd throw it out. I found this to be a
good way to reduce clutter. Of course, now I've gotten rid of a lot of things
I did use in the previous year, I just found I didn't really need to use them
anymore.

On the extreme side I've gotten rid of my bed, though that's perhaps the one
thing I miss. Sleeping on the floor is hard. It's kind of invigorating in a
way, though it's downright uncomfortable at times. I'm enjoying it now, but
when I finally buy my own place I'll definitely be repurchasing a bed.

When you throw out your stuff you just feel better about your day, and when
you get rid of things you really don't need, you find it simplifies your
routine. When I wake up in the morning I spend less time primping and
preening. I grab my laptop case and I head out to my workspace, and then I
work without worrying whether I made my bed or if my dresser needs dusting.
The experience is a lot like refactoring code. It's extremely liberating.

~~~
BrandonM
Marked up when I read that you threw out your bed. That gave me a good laugh,
as I didn't realize at first that you literally meant that you're down to "one
suitcase full of things".

------
menloparkbum
I ditched 700+ books the last time I moved. From a purely physical
perspective, books have an ownership cost that is as bad as anything else.
Once you have more than 100, they become heavy and tedious to move around,
require a lot of space, shelving systems, etc.

I wrote a personal wiki type program that hooks up to a barcode scanner and
lets me keep track of the books I have read. I just scan the book, it
populates an entry, and then I have places I can store quotes and thoughts
about the book. (I wrote this before Delicious Library and other such programs
were widely available)

I've found keeping track of what I read has made me a more careful reader and
alleviates the need for keeping the physical book around. However, I still
have a number of old books that I wouldn't bear to part with.

~~~
randallsquared
Yeah, I've probably bought and given away more books than anything else, and
the vast majority of books are not worth keeping around after you've read them
once.

I look forward to the day when all or virtually all books are available for
download. Webscriptions.net is a wonderful example of this for fiction, given
that they have pure HTML books, and not just PDF or some proprietary reader
format.

~~~
Goladus
I don't understand how people, other than those with perfect memories, can be
satisfied only reading a book one time. Any book that I thought worthwhile
enough to finish the first time, is at least worth picking up again to see if
I still think the same way. Even if I don't find it as useful the second time
through, I recognize the perspective I've gained.

~~~
randallsquared
Well, a novel is less likely to be rereadable than, say, _ANSI Common Lisp_,
because you'd use the latter as a reference. I sometimes reread novels, but
only the really especially good ones, if I remember that I've read it before.
In general, I don't read novels for perspective, though it's really nice when
there's some to be gained, rare though that is.

I've probably read somewhere around 10K books, the vast majority of which were
novels, and way more than half of which were not really worth reading had my
time been as limited as it later became. When I was a teen, it was easy to
finish two or three books a day of stuff I'd throw against the wall by chapter
two, now. The fact that I've read it and finished it is no indicator of worth.
:)

Anyway, I used to own a coupla thousand books, but after moving several times
without having looked inside most of them, it dawned on me that carrying
around all this dead tree was not very useful.

~~~
Goladus
I think the main difference between us then, is that I don't have a great
interest in reading lots and lots of books. I generally don't have the
patience to finish a book once, unless it's a book that I'd read several
times. I wind up reading far fewer books than yourself.

So for me, the comments I made apply to novels as well as reference material.
Second reads give me another chance to observe things like structure, or enjoy
knowing what's going to happen.

Actually though, the biggest factor for me was recognition of my own
mortality. When I was a kid, I'd keep books and reread them 5 times. When I
was a teenager, I'd reread them twice, and keep them expecting to read them
more. Now, I realize there's a limit to how much reading I'll be able to fit
into the rest of my life.

------
Alex3917
"Stuff - Paul Graham"

Am I the only one who thought this was going to be about someone's taxidermy
startup?

In all seriousness though, I think the best reason to keep relatively unused
things around is if they are objects of sociability. That is, things that
bring people together such as alcohol, homemade bread, board games, etc. At
one point I was even smart enough to buy a tea set because I thought it would
help me meet girls. (Of course I wasn't smart enough to see that my gf would
be Asian, but hey, who's complaining.) By definition objects of sociability
are used less often because you need at least two people, but they seem to be
worth keeping around.

It's weird because we seem to be entering this phase in history where social
status is signaled more by what you don't own than by what you do. For
example, clothing with logos is generally considered tacky and lower class. At
this point probably only another world war or a major recession could change
this.

------
far33d
The sellers of stuff have convinced us (especially americans) that you can't
just USE stuff. You need to OWN stuff. Need some specialized tool? Home Depot
will sell it to you, but no one will lend it to you, unless it is large and
very expensive.

Worse, these sellers of stuff have realized that they can't sell you durable
goods! God Forbid! Durable goods last forever! Instead, they've convinced
americans that there is value in disposable stuff! Paper napkins and plates,
disposable diapers, disposable tupperware, etc etc. Now they've turned those
one time purchases into subscription plans.

More stuff in your house. More stuff in landfills.

------
ivankirigin
What about sentimental value of things? What about accumulated worth of a box
of things after opening it every few years? Little overhead -- it's just a
box.

Why save books, besides the memories? Convenience of being able to look things
up? I like books, but my wifes parents are book sellers. They have hundreds of
thousands of rare books for sale.

She doesn't like to save anything but the most essential books.

The mental load of throwing something away that _might_ have value is pretty
high. It might be higher than the integrated attention paid to it in your
basement -- unless you move often.

~~~
pg
If you have some kind of attachment to something, then you shouldn't throw it
away. It has real value to you. The kind of stuff you should toss is the stuff
that you're keeping because you think it's valuable in the abstract.

~~~
ivankirigin
Indeed. I have a box in my basement with an incomplete set of work for school
since grade school and other junk. Each individual piece is pretty useless,
and has low sentimental value. The box is easy to store.

------
some
"Every thing you own takes energy away from you."

Wonderful sentence. This is how I feel too.

However, I think its some kind of special mental handicap of nerds.

There are people, who are living perfectly energetic and well in a huge pile
of crap.

Too me it looks like analytical people are scared by complexity of stuff,
while intuitive people like it.

~~~
asdflkj
>Too me it looks like analytical people are scared by complexity of stuff,
while intuitive people like it.

It seems more likely that analytical people are aware of complexity of stuff,
while non-analytical people are not.

------
uuilly
I think the best way to avoid stuff accumulation is to throw away your TV. Or
at least disconnect if from the outside world. Whether you think so or not TV
makes you buy more stuff.

I like to buy verbs, not nouns. While I was working in the corporate world I
lived very simply and saved a lot. I spent all my money on travel. Later I
dumped it all into a startup. People talked about the riskiness of startups
but I just thought of it as paying to do something cool.

~~~
mynameishere
_I like to buy verbs, not nouns._

Really? I like to buy adjectives. Example: Cool.

~~~
zach
I truly prefer to buy adverbs at Lolly's. Love that place. Tremendously. They
even have an "LY attachment" for my old adjectives.

------
jmzachary
PG missed a couple of points in this essay. First, the proliferation of PODS
and self-strorage businesses (at least in my part of the country) is further
evidence that people have too much stuff. In my neighborhood, folks with two
car garages park on the street because the garage is filled with crap.

The other point is why people accumulate stuff (crap). Shopping addictions
aside, people get more stuff to keep score. Stuff is a scoring mechanism,
especially for folks with low self-esteem. It would be useful to collect data
to see if there is a correlation or causation between education / achievement
levels and accumulation of stuff. I would posit that high achievers and PhDs
have less stuff than the norm.

~~~
BrandonM
I'm not so sure about the PhDs comment. Nearly every professor's office I've
been to is filled with crap.

------
jimbokun
When our kids play room is filled with a mess of toys, they mostly ignore all
of them and act bored.

If those toys are put into storage in the basement and just a select few toys
are chosen to leave out, they show a lot more interest in those toys.

We have also decided to hold an annual yard sale with other families on our
street to get rid of as much stuff as possible every year.

------
rams
"The average 25 year old is no match for companies that have spent years
figuring out how to get you to spend money on stuff. They make the experience
of buying stuff so pleasant that "shopping" becomes a leisure activity."

Vance Packard's 'The Hidden Persuaders' was one of the earliest books to deal
with this topic in depth. It's scary how they understand us better than
ourselves. Book URL:[http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Persuaders-Vance-
Packard/dp/067...](http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Persuaders-Vance-
Packard/dp/0671531492)

------
gibsonf1
Excellent article - and the point about mental overload from stuff is a good
one. This is the same point made for stuff in the form of information in GTD.

A great technique for de-stuffing and making $: craigslist.

Best productivity boost I've made: Selling TV on craigslist - it sold in 2
hours. (The extra time has been great for working on the startup)

------
donna
So true, so true.. ... I even stopped buying most books. With the public
library database, I can order a book for 75c from anywhere in the Peninsula
-<http://catalog.plsinfo.org/> thanks Paul.

------
henning
Duuuude. Like, the stuff we own? It owns _us_ , dude. You know? It's all like,
Fight Club redux, man.

 _pause_

Deep, man.

~~~
sethjohn
I appreciate your sarcastic humor.

Paul's essays on entrepeneurialism are incredible, but this one seemed really
sophomoric to me. (e.g. about as intellectually complex as the other stoned
conversations I could have had after watching Fight Club!)

------
palish
"You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're
not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet."

The first rule of YCombinator is..

This is a good essay. My mother has a basement full of stuff, hallways full of
stuff, and recently moved into my grandmother's house and filled her living
room with stuff. Magazines, boxes.. Any average person would be appalled.

She'd probably read this essay and go "Hmm.. Yeah, that's about right", then
go buy another piece of furniture from Ikea.

------
eposts
I've been practicing this minimalist form of existence for some time now. For
those that have too much stuff, here is how you get rid of stuff:

1\. Mark a portion of your basement or apartment for some of your "stuff"

2\. After a year or two if you have not had to use something at all from this
pile get rid of it - ebay, craigslist, garage sale or donate.

3\. You will feel good about less clutter.

4\. Repeat till you're left with only stuff you really need.

The only place this hasn't worked for me is electronics "stuff".

------
eposts
"In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have."

Why would poor people have more stuff Paul? I see rich people living in
McMansions have a lot more stuff than poor people and I am pretty sure Bill G
has more stuff than me :).

~~~
randallsquared
I live in a place he'd probably characterize as poor (my neighbors probably
all make less than 20K), and everyone has LOTS of stuff around here, often
including the mentioned cars in the front yard. When you buy cheaper stuff, it
breaks more often, and it's usually cheaper to buy a new one than fix the old
one, but if you're poor, you spent too much of your income on the old one to
be comfortable just throwing it away. So the old microwave that doesn't work
goes in the closet in case it can be fixed, and you buy a new microwave for
less than you paid for the old one two years ago. You keep the broken chair in
your living room because eventually you'll have enough money and time to fix
and recover it, and then for years tell people not to sit in it when they come
in to visit, because "it's just broken right now, but we'll get it fixed".

------
Psyonic
Completely agree, but even question books. If they are especially valuable,
sure, but I recently got rid of most of my books as I felt even they were
weighing me down. Still not satisfied though... probably need to get rid of
even more stuff.

~~~
Goladus
Books were actually my first hint that I had a problem with too much stuff.
(Though it wasn't until I was faced with the prospect of moving to a small
room in Boston that I actually forced myself to get rid of stuff). When I got
my first job, one of my favorite things to do was visit Barnes and Noble. I
bought a bunch of books that I didn't touch for at least 6-12 months, during
which time they did nothing but clutter my bedroom.

Someday I hope to have a nice big personal library, but until then I only keep
as many books as can fit in a couple of plastic bins under my bed.

Things with sentimental value: I have a folder with printouts of a bunch of
code I wrote back in 1997. It was one of the coolest projects I ever worked
on, and I keep meaning to go review it to see what sort of stupid mistakes I
was making in my ignorance. It's been 10 years and I haven't spent more than 2
minutes looking at it, yet I lug it with me wherever I go. Other examples are
pictures, concert tickets, recordings, papers, articles, contacts, etc... I
accumulate stuff without having to buy anything.

Like paystubs, bills, insurance paperwork, receipts, and all the other
bureaucratic garbage that you never know if you'll ever need or not.

And pennies.

Sometimes I feel like I waste half my life trying to get rid of all the stuff
that winds up in my apartment.

------
garbowza
Finally... I'm not the only one that feels this way! This was a very well
articulated essay. I obsessively avoid accumulation of objects because they
dilute the actual value (to me, not a dollar amount) of the few things I
actually enjoy.

------
apprester
Paul makes a good point, though I have to say George Carlin made it much
funnier! <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac>

~~~
thomasswift
I was starting to get down about all this 'stuff'. Great Link.

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davidw
Good one! Some comments:

Moving across the atlantic, or to some other suitably distant locale is a
great way of convincing yourself that you don't really need that much crap.
The problem gets to be when you move back and forth too much and end up
getting paranoid about buying anything at all that you know you're going to
throw out. We're contemplating going back to the states again at this point...
_sigh_.

Books... all I can say is "right on!". I'm glad my wife understood when I paid
a bunch of money to have mine shipped over here.

In terms of food, after my latest trip back to the US, I think people there
are just starting to wake up to the fact that more/bigger is not necessarily
better, and it will take them a while to really catch on, and start really
aiming for quality. I actually think my best business idea concerns food, but
it will have to wait till we go to the states to try and implement it.

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mhartl
I've had the same epiphany, and was doing something about it as recently as
today. One thing that stops me from getting rid of my stuff is that my dad has
been associated with Goodwill Industries for years, and he is always talking
about how he's donating stuff to Goodwill (but not before asking me if I want
some of it first---which I sometimes take because even I get tired of saying
"no" all the time). But Goodwill is like 15 minutes away, you have to put
stuff in a box or a bag and haul it over there, and I've never been there
before so I don't know exactly how to get there. My trash can, on the other
hand, is right here. That doesn't seem like a big difference, but it's big
enough that it has kept probably 50 lbs. of clothes in my closet and drawers
that I never wear. I'm as resistant to guilt as anyone I know, but even I have
a hard time throwing away "perfectly good" clothing that's only been worn
once.

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augy
I am going to bookmark this essay with the tag girlfriend.

~~~
ivankirigin
i hope you're planning on ridding yourself of all those old girlfriends in
your basement :-P

~~~
augy
On a serious note, I think this was a good essay for guys and girls. The
reason we buy so much stuff is everyone inherently wants to be noticed and to
feel important. Like Paul said, companies have done a terrific job at making
us think stuff makes you important. On my high school senior trip one of the
girls brought an entire suitcase just for her shoes. Each of the 14 pairs of
shoes made her feel more important. My question is how do we make people think
that our web applications will make them as important as their shoes do?

~~~
byrneseyeview
"My question is how do we make people think that our web applications will
make them as important as their shoes do?"

The standard answer is to make the application that would be your homepage if
someone else had made it by now.

~~~
ivankirigin
Don't most people have blank home pages to have faster browser start times? I
haven't had a home page for years.

~~~
randallsquared
Google loads REALLY quickly. I don't notice the difference between a blank
page and Google, and I live in the US, where broadband speeds are supposed to
be woefully inadequate, per some recent article on reddit. :)

~~~
ivankirigin
Google toolbar in firefox is faster

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theorique
Following up on comments about buying good things that get heavy use...

I'm typing this comment on a PowerBook G4 that has probably seen over 6 000
hours of use. At an initial purchase price of ~$1800, that's a bargain. I use
this thing all the time and have realized so much value from it.[ _]

Compare this to my "good suit" which cost about $600, and has been worn a
total of < 50 hours (job interviews, special occasions, etc).

Both are tools with a specific purpose but I get much more of a warm feeling
using this computer, knowing that I bought a high quality tool and am using it
to the fullest extent.

[_] This isn't a Mac vs PC comment - if you got a top quality ThinkPad or Vaio
notebook and are using it daily, then you know what I mean.

~~~
theorique
oops, my footnote turned into markup... that was the point of the paired
square brackets that italicized the middle of my comment above.

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supahfly_remix
I agree that Americans are too consumed with stuff. More importantly, though,
we don't even make our own stuff any more -- the Chinese do. While stuff might
not seem important, if that supply line ever gets cut, we'll see how important
it really is.

The making of stuff also factors into global power. The US was able to win a
war on two fronts in WWII in part because of its ability to make stuff.
Remember the guns vs. butter axes on the production possibility curve in
ECON101?

------
samb
in 2000 i was moving around a bunch. everything i owned had to fit in the back
of my station wagon. that included bed, furniture, musical instruments,
computers, books, etc.

i slept on an inflatable mattress for several years. i also lived in a walk-in
closet for 6 months. all those things were actually really good. it was an
exciting time. living in a closet added to the subversion factor. i was
invisible.

with marriage came the consolidation of things, and wedding presents, and now
i'm one of the people with a garage full of stuff. strange things. not useful
things. bags full of old hammers. children's things that we're saving. the
good silverware. a desk that's too big to go in the house.

we live in a large-ish 3 bedroom house and i only spend time in a
closet/office, the bathroom, the bedroom, the deck, and the kitchen. i have no
use for 800-1000 square feet of my home. but the kids like it.

it's still a very exciting time, but there's lots of stuff. marriage is
compromise, and stuff can be a part of that compromise. we have 2 gravy boats.
one for everyday gravy and one for special gravy. of course, we only have
gravy once every few years. but that's ok. i still work in a closet. somewhat
invisible.

------
dfranke
Stuff isn't really all _that_ illiquid. Ebay and its ilk have created a
reasonably efficient market for random junk. There's still a lot of overhead,
though: writing the ad, monitoring the auction, and packing and shipping the
item is time-consuming. No matter how good I got at it, it would probably
still take $20 worth of my time. But if you're poor, it might still be
worthwhile.

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Goladus
I don't think poor people have more stuff, so much as it is that poorer people
tend to be less able to organize it effectively.

Rich people have whole rooms or houses full of stuff that hardly ever gets
used, but since it's indexed appropriately (eg "Summer Home" or "Ballroom" or
"Gallery") and maintained that way by hired help, it doesn't bother anyone.

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maurycy
Honestly, I hate buying stuff, and I'm pretty depressed every time I have to.
It takes time to go to shopping mall, a very loud place, and there's always
risk that a new thing won't serve me well. Later, even if it turns out that
the thing is not that bad as I thought, time destroys it, what forces me to
repeat the whole pain.

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Tichy
I used to put my hopes onto the computer, but by now I am worried that it will
merely shift the problem. While space is not a problem on todays hard drive,
too much "stuff" still makes navigating it strenuous...

Still, I can't wait for good ebook readers to appear, books are my single
biggest "stuff problem".

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mojuba
Unfortunately it's not only useless stuff we are buying. We are also buying
lies in mass media. Basically, both are result of our inability to reason
quickly and independently.

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miannini
The more possessions you have the thicker the prison walls constructed around
ones life. Minimalism creates freedom.

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byrneseyeview
What kind of heuristics do you use, besides "Buy it if you know who will be
happy to inherit it"?

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orionlogic
i wonder if these advices applies to bookmarks as well.Where i have 5000
bookmarks to be read, look,store share but don't have time where my mind
always echoes the importance and usefulness of these bookmarks i own.

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blored
Paragraphs 8 & 9 are obviously allusions to ClutterMe.com

