
Stuff (2007) - gatsby
http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html
======
tjic
Depending on how you look at it, I either own 20,000 plus five things, or just
two plus five things.

I'm exaggerating, but I've got a core point:

There are two things that I spend a LOT of time on and get a lot of enjoyment
from:

* cooking

* wood and metalworking

I've got two meticulously organized sets of things that reflect that:

* a great kitchen with all sorts of implements, frozen stocks, a hundred spices, etc.

* a great workshop with all sorts of tools and supplies

I keep those two areas perfectly organized, because this increases my
enjoyment of them on a daily basis. ...and I have no desire to prune them. My
workshop has a long tail: I may not need the #3 dental pick every month, but
when I want it, I really really want it. So it's in a drawer with a label. I
may use it just three times a year, but I use SOME long-tail item every day or
two.

Outside of my kitchen and shop, though, I abjure clutter. I own one coat, one
sweater, five shirts, etc.

I entirely agree with Paul that one of the biggest expenses is the mental
expense of keeping things cataloged.

My advice: if there's something you really enjoy that requires tools, get them
and use them. ...but aside from that, yes, be a minimalist.

My two cents.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is a great distinction. Sadly I've got a bunch of robotics stuff that
realize I'll never make into robots.

I gave away all of my 68HC11 gear, the boards, the chip programmers, the data
books, the spare chips, everything because I realized I was never going to
build another robot with a Motorola 68HC11 at its core.

Now of course, I don't miss it, but at the time, shipping it out to the silly
silly folks who offered to take it off my hands it felt like giving up some
precious treasure. And I realized the 'treasure' was the memories of what I
had done with this stuff, not the stuff itself. I've been slowly
reconstructing my robotics site to honor those memories.

I also find that I have a hard time with stuff that "could" be useful to
"someone" but I can't just throw it away. I put a box of stuff like that on
the table at Hacker Dojo with an exhortation to use it to hack cool things,
but there was no one there to "accept" it so I don't know if it was useful or
not. It was sufficient for me though to create the possibility that it "might"
be useful.

------
kylec
The amount of stuff you have is the difference between the amount of stuff you
acquire and the amount of stuff you sell or discard. This essay does a pretty
good job of covering the former, but the only mention of the latter is the
following:

    
    
        And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it.
        Throw away a perfectly good rotary telephone? I might need that
        one day.
    

I wish this idea was expanded upon more. One of the contributing factors as to
why poorer people tend to have more stuff is because the cost of discarding or
selling and subsequently replacing stuff is higher than simply storing it. If
you have a well-paying job or are otherwise independently wealthy, it's easy
to throw away a $20 rotary phone because you know you can just go out and buy
a new one without inconvenience.

There's also the compunction against discarding something that still works or
is still useful. For example, I know quite a few people that have old
computers gathering dust because their owner has subsequently replaced them
with faster machines, but hasn't discarded the old ones because they're still
operable and might be useful for a side project or something.

I'm not really sure what the solution to either of those things is. Perhaps we
need some sort of market where stuff is more of a liquid commodity than it is
now - if there's less of a financial penalty to selling and repurchasing, and
if it's easier for perfectly good items to be sold for another's use, it might
enable people to have the option to have less stuff.

~~~
nlawalker
> some sort of market

Garage sales! Seriously, though, garage sales exist because most stuff is so
cheap and disposable to begin with that if you tried to sell it for what
someone would actually pay for it, you'd be lucky to break even after any
shipping, transaction fees and the value of any personal time/effort you put
into the process. So, you have a garage sale: you sell it (or at least show
it) in all bulk, all at once to minimize effort, with zero transaction or
shipping fees. Of course, making the effort to visit a garage sale has a non-
negligible cost for the (potential) _buyer_.

There are already thriving markets for stuff that's not cheap and disposable -
electronics/phones, recreational/sports equipment, furniture, cars, etc.

As for the compunction against discarding something that still works, my
solution is to donate it to Goodwill (whatever you do, don't throw it away if
it's "perfectly good") and take it as a lesson learned - think harder before
buying this item, or an item like it, again.

~~~
ChuckMcM
For stuff that is hard to characterize (like the aforementioned "vintage"
computers) garage sales don't really cut it. At my previous garage sale I had
a VAXStation 4000/VLC with a VT-220 terminal on it running VMS for sale ($25
or make offer). A lot of "Oh I remember those!" but no actual interest in
acquiring it. Whereas EBay used to be a good venue for that, because there was
a critical mass of people you could often find at least _one_ person who would
buy something.

That said, I bought my HeNe laser at a garage sale nearby for $15. It is of
course much less convienient than a laser pointer and at 2mW not very bright,
but scores for me on the coolness factor. I always wanted a laser as a kid and
being able to acquire one scratched that itch.

~~~
dennisgorelik
Isn't it cheaper to throw old stuff away than sell it on eBay/garage
sale/etc.?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Unfortunately yes, and that is rapidly making our world a worse place to live.
We keep throwing away stuff and making more, instead of reusing the old, thus
wasting resources and unnecessarily polluting.

~~~
lmm
Waste of resources is self-correcting. If we were ever to run short of e.g.
aluminium, scrap prices would go up and it would become worth selling old
things rather than throwing them away.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Yes, but entropy is not self-correcting. We're wasting (as in, destroying,
_foerver_ ) easily extractable material and energy. It's much easier to drive
10 000 tons of aluminium out of the mountain with trucks than to collect and
melt enough scrap to get the same amount of metal for your factory from junk.

Economy is a leaky abstraction, it is ultimately subject to physics and it
_will_ break down if we push it too far hoping that market will correct all
side effects of bad decisions.

------
cottonseed
I used to think books were special, too. Having thousands of books is
expensive: they are literally expensive, you buy or build shelves for them,
they take up a lot of space, they're extremely painful to move, you have to
organize them, and you keep mental space for them -- I own this book, I don't
own that one -- otherwise, you might as well not have them. You don't use them
constantly. Moreover, you can get an instant electronic copy or a physical
copy in minutes, or at most a day (Amazon prime).

Also, you confuse quality (good) and fragility. Most of the stuff I have is
very high quality, which is why I use it every day and I don't have to worry
about it falling apart.

~~~
jisaacstone
Exactly. Unless you make notes (most) books are instantly replaceable. I have
one shelf of my absolute favourite books & dvds (so I can loan them out). Plus
a kindle for everything else.

The reality is knowledge is even cheaper than food these days, and books are
backbreaking whenever you move. A rational cost/benefit analysis will tell you
to rid yourself of books before clothes. A favourite shirt is nearly
irreplaceable, a favourite book can be replaced in a day.

~~~
dasil003
Of course one big problem with going digital for books today is Amazon can
erase your entire library quicker than a dandelion seed in a forest fire.

------
philwelch
It's all well and good to minimize the amount of stuff you accumulate, but I
wonder how you handle having kids. Children are natural hoarders--I can't
remember a single Christmas where I didn't want more and bigger toys. I spent
almost as much time flipping through Lego catalogs fantasizing about playing
with the biggest and most elaborate Lego sets as I spent playing with my
actual Legos. Sure, you can just get your kids less toys, but then your kids
have friends who have more toys and they pick up this kind of greed as a
consequence of that. Is minimalism something kids can learn, or is it
something you have to mature into?

On another note, my parents passed away awhile back, and the single most
overwhelming day-to-day challenge was how much stuff they had, which in effect
meant how much stuff I had. It didn't really hit me all at once, though, since
every single object was its own epiphany. By no voluntary effort of my own,
_I_ own a _chainsaw_! A _shotgun_! A bookshelf filled with _deranged right-
wing books_! A _C-band satellite dish_! Another chainsaw! Another shotgun!

Fortunately, there's such a thing as an "estate sale" where other people will
actually come in and sell all of your stuff out of your house for you. All you
have to do is go through and pick out the things you actually want to keep, as
well as papers and photographs. The trick to this is, you don't actually have
to be dead to have an estate sale, although you probably need to have so much
stuff that it's worthwhile to take the time whitelisting the possessions you
want to keep rather than blacklisting the ones you don't want to keep.
Ironically, this only exists on the backs of the hoarders pg writes about. You
can get amazing deals on "perfectly good" stuff at estate sales.

The papers and photographs alone, though, can be overwhelming. Easily most of
the stuff I kept were papers and photos. [1] I could justify all the advances
ever made in computing simply by looking at an attic full of papers and
photographs and contemplating the fact that they would all fit in my hand were
they digitized.

[1] The rest were either items of genuine sentimental value or--my own
weakness--"perfectly good" "vintage" computers, including a pair of NeXTs! If
anyone here knows of a good Apple museum, by the way, please email me, because
I don't want my attic to be it.

~~~
rthomas6
In these modern times, Craigslist, Ebay, and Amazon exist as wonderful ways to
offload items that may contain value for someone else that no longer contain
any value for you. Goodwill stores exist as great places to donate things that
have become clutter that will not sell quickly. When I have children, I plan
to regularly donate or sell toys that are no longer played with. The old legos
will of course be added to the standard Giant Bin of Legos.

~~~
philwelch
Ebay and Amazon require you to separately list and ship each item, and
Craigslist is both unreliable and requires much of the same thing. But they,
along with Goodwill, were what I was referring to when I mentioned
blacklisting the things you don't want. At some point--and estates are
certainly one of these--it's so much easier to whitelist and outsource the
getting-rid-of process for the rest.

Unless you're talking about my NeXTs. I'd rather make a personal connection
with someone who would appreciate them more than I would than just let
anonymous hooligans on Ebay buy them.

------
nostromo
In 2007 I would have agreed with pg regarding books being different. In 2013,
I've gotten rid of all but maybe two dozen books with sentimental value.

~~~
grecy
I couldn't agree more.

Books are big, heavy and don't hold much value#. They cost a lot to store and
a lot to move from place to place. I got rid of almost all mine, and now use
the local library extensively, which is very enjoyable.

# Unless you have a signed first ed. or something, in which case you're
collecting antiques, not books

~~~
flyinRyan
I just switched to ebooks. Now there's no weight problem, no space problem. I
can't sell them, but as you said; they didn't hold value anyway.

------
grecy
After being in Central and South America for two years, the biggest shock upon
retuning to North America was the amount of stuff people have, and how easy it
is to buy.

It blows my mind that most houses I drive past every day have two cars, a
boat, an RV, a snow machine (or two), a quad, skis & snowboards and that's
just what I can see when they have their garage door open in spring.

Not only do people have lots of stuff, they have so much they have to pay
people to store it for them (self-storage). I had completely forgotten about
those, because they simply don't exist in places where people don't have
excess stuff.

I highly recommend getting out of the developed world for a while to get
perspective on how much stuff everyone has.

~~~
b_emery
I had some stuff in self-storage when I once went away for several months.
Spending some time there made me want to get rid of all my stuff. It's a very
strange and sad place. One could write a novel about it. It's a place of
transitions, and I got the impression that most of the transitions were not
for the better.

Ever watch that show where they get people to bid on abandoned self storage
lockers? It's so weird that people pay money to store a bunch of junk. Not
that the people are weird, just that humans are wired in such a way that we'd
pay $150 a month to store a comparable dollar amount of stuff, because of the
way it makes us feel. Maybe it's to avoid the way it makes us feel to get rid
of it. That's what people are paying for. So they're basically being held
ransom by their stuff I guess.

------
tych0
Funny this was posted, I just came to this realization myself recently. I've
always known it, but I didn't really /realize/ it until about two weeks ago.
So, I've begun selling things on craigslist. I've made $147 so far, which
doesn't seem like a lot, but it's probably the $147 I'll be most proud of
earning this year.

Stuff is generally like lines of code in software: writing it (acquiring it)
is fun, but the real fun starts when you figure out how to delete it. A good
refactoring with a net negative number of lines brings me great joy, just as
getting rid of this stuff on craigslist has.

In fact, it brings me so much joy that for the forseeable future, I have a new
rule: if I buy something, I must figure out how to sell/recycle/trash
something of equal or more mass. This will force me to physically reduce the
amount of stuff in my life. Obviously, mass isn't a fantastic approximation,
but neither is the number of lines of code.

------
damonpace
I grew up in the back of a junkyard and watched my father collect "stuff" my
entire life. It's a minor mental disorder, irrationally rooted in a fear of
having nothing. To my father it was his security blanket. He would look out
across the junkyard and see money. Everyone else would just see junk. As long
as my father had something in the yard, he felt financially safe. Junk can't
fire you and no one was going to steal it. (Only tweekers steal junk) Try
stealing a broken down steam roller or a 1 ton gold smelting machine or a 10mb
hard drive so big it had wheels. It's pointless. To my father, everything had
value, but to everyone else it was just junk. The only people who ever
purchased anything were other junk collectors.

Watching this as a child and eventually as an adult, I've put the collection
of "stuff" on a 10 point scale. 1 being a pure minimalist and 10 being an
extreme horder. We all fit somewhere on that scale. I'm probably a 3 or 4. My
father is a 10. Understanding where you are on this scale is important to de-
cluttering your life.

Sometimes value gets set by factors other than price. Value & price are not
equally correlated. Value can be translated as functionality, prestige,
vanity, security, companionship, etc. People get value of things beyond price
and each person sees a different value for each product based on their
psychological needs.

All PG seems to be saying is to question an objects value before you purchase
it. Otherwise, you could end up with a house full of junk that you and no one
else will ever use again. In other words...Question everything, including
value.

------
timdellinger
I'll make the obligatory comment mentioning the Hacker News custom of titling
the submissions of older content with the date, generally like so:

Stuff [2007]

------
jpdoctor
> _Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. It's not especially
> inconvenient to own several thousand books,_

Only thing I disagree with in this essay (I have many many bookcases that have
gone back and forth across the US multiple times.)

I am quite jealous of the younger gen: Their bookcases will be an iPad.

~~~
grecy
Why move them around when you could just borrow them from the local library?

~~~
jpdoctor
The local library doesn't have my collection of tech books (semiconductor
physics, circuit design, math math and more math, physics, physics, and more
physics...)

~~~
grecy
And they won't get them in for you?

When a book is requested at my local library they'll either purchase it to add
to the lib catalog, or they'll borrow it from any other library in the country
that has it so I can borrow it.

~~~
jpdoctor
> _And they won't get them in for you?_

Perhaps, but they don't live on startup time. Or perhaps I'm an impatient
beast. Both are possible.

~~~
grecy
Right on.

Interestingly, I've always found impatience to be a huge factor in stuff
accumulation.

i.e. Can't wait for something-or-other, so just buy it.

------
coenhyde
It's amazing how much stuff you can accumulate when you're not paying
attention. I had so much stuff and it didn't help me at all. It only prevented
me from moving when I wanted. So I recently sold all my stuff, threw out all
the rest and moved country.

I live a just as luxurious life as I did before. I just find solutions to
stuff that doesn't require owning the physical goods. Keep in mind half of
this stuff is only possible because i'm living in the US now. And the rest is
pretty obvious. eg.

\- Rent a furnished apartment.

\- Use car sharing services

\- Buy ebooks instead of physical books

\- Use Netflix/Hulu instead of owning a tv

\- Use pdf digital signing software instead of owning a printer/scanner/fax

And really the only physical things I need now are some clothes and my laptop.

~~~
Volpe
To add to your qualification:

you are living in the US

AND

you have money.

I don't mean this as a criticism of you, but instead the minimilist movement
in general: There is something self-indulgent about middle class, talking
about how "cool" it is to throw away stuff, and be minimalistic... It's almost
a statement about how privileged you are.

~~~
tych0
I don't see how it is at all related to privilege; in almost every case he
cited, it's cheaper to go minimalist. Let's look at his (perfectly reasonable)
list of examples:

\- Rent a furnished apartment.

This one you do need more $$ for. I don't have a furnished apartment, but I've
spent less than $100 on my furniture (including getting some off the side of
the road). I will feel no qualms about leaving it on the side of the road when
I move.

\- Use car sharing services

This depends. If it's more economical to use a car service, do it this way.
For me it's not, so I own a car (but not a nice one, which keeps insurance and
body-work costs low).

\- Buy ebooks instead of physical books

Here there's no privilege either, since in my experience e-books cost about
the same as regular books. (Maybe slightly less, but that will only offset the
cost of the reader.)

\- Use Netflix/Hulu instead of owning a tv

Again, no privilege. A reasonable cable subscription in the US is going to be
$30, a hulu plus subscription is $10. Plus, you can sell your TV.

\- Use pdf digital signing software instead of owning a printer/scanner/fax

This doesn't work all the time, because you still do have to print stuff every
once in a while (trust me, I've not owned a printer for the last 7 years).
However, usually you can just print stuff at work, or in a pinch, at kinko's.
I've probably spent less than $5 over the last seven years at professional
printing places, and their printers are much nicer than the crappy ink jet you
get at best buy.

~~~
Volpe
I think my definition of privilege and yours are at very different levels.

> \- Rent a furnished apartment.

You have your own place to sleep at night, with (nice) furniture.

> \- Use car sharing services

You have access to cars!?

> \- Buy ebooks instead of physical books

> \- Use Netflix/Hulu instead of owning a tv

> \- Use pdf digital signing software instead of owning a printer/scanner/fax

You have access to high speed internet, and advanced electronic devices, and
live in a society that supports them.

Most of the people in the world, don't have these things. It's easy for us to
sit in 1st world countries and talk about how we aren't privileged because we
didn't go to private school, or we buy cheap ebooks on our iPad... but even
these things are out of reach for most of the world... that is what I define
as "privilege".

~~~
barry-cotter
_I think my definition of privilege and yours are at very different levels_

I didn't downvote your previous post in this thread until I read this one.
Almost everyone who can read this website is privileged by your standards.
Everyone in my apartment block here in Shanghai is privileged by your
definition. Some of them are from Anhui province, or other poor ass provinces,
where there are people in the Bottom Billion, people who live on less than a
dollar a day.

If you are politically tone deaf, you should confine the use of
political/sociological terms of art to arenas where you will be understood by
everyone or where everyone agrees with your already.

~~~
Volpe
I would guess that everyone on this website is privileged as well.

My definition is based on _fact_ , I realise those facts are confronting, but
not invalid.

Privileged people who think they aren't just have blinders on.

------
dools
One sure fire way to cure stuff-itis is to move house a lot. I have moved at
least every 2 years since I was 16 (I moved a lot before that, too but I
wasn't in charge so I didn't really notice).

EDIT: I'm 32 now

In some cases I would live somewhere only 6 months, so I've moved a LOT.

I am now completely allergic to stuff. I throw things out wantonly and refuse
gifts. I buy things only when they are something I critically need, and even
then I wait a while.

There is not only the mental cost of stuff that PG mentions, but the cost of
transportation, storage and disposal (a cost which has become much more
significant - garbage tip costs in Australia seem to have gone up several
orders of magnitude faster than everything else since I was a kid).

I'm not sure if you can achieve a cure vicariously or if you actually have to
go through the mentally scarring process of moving the same 12 old PCs that
you'll freecycle one of these days through 8 houses, but try asking yourself
"If I buy this now ... How would I feel about moving it?"

EDIT: several typos (after moving off my mobile keyboard)

~~~
philwelch
A lot of people just have a workaround--their parents have a house, so they'll
stash all their stuff that they want to keep but don't actually use at their
parents' house. The last laugh is on them, though--when their parents die, not
only do they have to deal with all that stuff again, but also all their
parents' stuff, and that can be the hardest stuff to worry about.

------
SeppoErviala
Attitudes toward stuff change slowly because you learn them from your parents.

My grandmother used to save everything starting from plastic bags, strings,
plastic food containers, used nails and screws to electricity, water, heat and
money. I suspect it is because when she was young there was a serious lack for
everything from food to building materials.

I can see the same attitude in my parents except that they hoard a bit more
expensive stuff like books, tools, electronics, music containers and
furniture.

I used to collect electronics, music, comic books and MTG-cards but at some
point I just stopped. The need to collect more stuff that I had learned from
my elders wasn't useful anymore. It is also apparent that some companies are
trying to market and exploit this behaviour for their own gain.

I still own too much stuff to fit in my apartment. I find it extremely hard to
throw away 'perfectly good' stuff if I feel that it could be useful to
someone. Yet it is quite laborious to sell it or to find someone who needs it.

------
mathattack
It's interesting how close his comments are to Fight Club. :-)

From <http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/quotes>

"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I
see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire
generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising
has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we
don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We
have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our
Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe
that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we
won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off. "

Does this mean that the first rule of Hacker News is nobody talks about Hacker
News?

But seriously, the movie (and Paul's article) hits a nerve because we are
indeed consumed by our stuff. There is a carrying cost for everything - every
idea in our head, every physical item, every piece of clothes.

Similar to what others have said, going abroad helped me realize how little I
really need. I remember shipping all these boxes with me, only to not open
most of them after I arrived. If I didn't think of something back home in
storage over 6 months, would I ever need it? But it's still hard to avoid the
weight of possessions.

------
alok-g
A common thing I find many people don't realize is that they accumulate too
much stuff, find their home is too small, and then move to a bigger home. They
are accumulating stuff often thinking they are saving money (e.g. buy
wholesale from Costco), or not throw old stuff that still has some future
utility to them. The money they are subconsciously paying just for the _space_
for these things may actually be more than their worth.

------
danielweber
I wonder if video games warped my view. My characters in Ultima III could
carry a practically unlimited amount of equipment, and the price for buying
and selling was the same, so stuff was as good as cash if you were in a towne.

In reality, it's very hard to sell random stuff yourself, especially if you
want even a fraction of the "market price" someone would pay to get the
equivalent object at the store.

~~~
cschep
Definitely something I've had to realize as I got older. One of the lies that
I tell myself is that I can buy new stuff because I can easily sell it a year
later for so close to what I bought it for, I'd be a fool NOT to buy it!

Apple products are the only things that this has been true for ultimately..
And honestly, having a laptop around enables me to make money so it's a no
brainer.

------
Julianhearn
Love this, so so true. I've done rather well for myself financially and can
buy most things I want, or thought I wanted, and now realise that rarely does
stuff, beyond the essentials of life, bring much happiness. My recommendation
is to spend more on experiences.

------
peterjamescain
reading that piece made me think of an article that I came across a while ago,
about a photographer who went around rural China convincing people to cart all
their 'stuff' outside their home and would take a photo of it all...amazing to
see their life possessions on display;
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19648095>

------
HardyLeung
Gotta watch this: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac>

~~~
cschep
... and a book!

------
jsvaughan
I was 50/50 on posting this, because contrary to the point of the article it
wouldn't work if stuff was universally valueless, but I made FreelyWheely
(<http://www.freelywheely.com>) precisely as a means of getting rid of
completely usable but, to me, less than worthless stuff.

What I have discovered is that there are some things that are almost
universally worthless (e.g. CRT tvs and monitors), not so surprising, but
there are also a lot of people out there who really are quite desperate for
very basic things, front yard full of cars or not.

------
krrrh
My favorite hack to avoid buying stuff that I really don't need is to
photograph it in the store with my phone. I tell myself that I need to look
into the product reviews when I get home to my computer, and the photograph is
a reminder and documentation of the price and model. If it checks out ill come
back and buy it.

95% of the time I've completely forgotten about it when I get home.

Also, obligatory Geeorge Carlin bit on stuff:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLoge6QzcG>

------
platz
<http://video.reboot.dk/video/486788/bruce-sterling-reboot-11>

"Four variety of items: Beautiful things; emotionally important things; tools,
devices and appliances that efficiently perform some useful function; and
category four, everything else."

[http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/02/transcript-
of...](http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2011/02/transcript-of-
reboot-11-speech-by-bruce-sterling-25-6-2009/)

------
durkie
my rule to my family at christmas: don't get me anything i can't eat.

telling relatives "don't get me anything" never ends up working, so if they're
going to get me something, at least it will be delicious.

------
rodrigoavie
Loved this essay. I think pg nailed it when he said that after some point,
it's like you don't own stuff anymore. They own you. And the stuff we keep may
become serious dependency in our life, which reduces our flexibility and
freedom to do new stuff.

I just read this article, glad I did in a point of my life where it really
makes a huge difference.

------
trustfundbaby
It really comes to a thing that my folks taught me about money. Don't buy
something unless you've wanted it three times

\--- Larry Wall

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taeric
I have a hard time getting past the "poor people have more stuff" idea in the
beginning. This is akin to thinking that rich people are cleaner. My
observation is just that rich people have help. I'd be highly curious to know
if there are good numbers into these claims.

~~~
gatsby
I ran a quick search for articles or data to support pg's idea but couldn't
find any.

I'm wondering if, on average, "rich" and "poor" people have a similar amount
of stuff/junk, but the rich have higher-quality junk and more room to spread
it out so it looks cleaner or more minimalist.

~~~
taeric
Pretty much my thoughts. If you ever find anything on this, I'd be interested.

------
wensing
I disagree with his assertion that clutter doesn't bother kids as much as
adults. My kids always play more contentedly for longer periods after we've
done a big purge or simply organized their toys. I think they get overwhelmed
but don't know how to articulate it.

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pm90
This is a great essay, especially a great timing for me. As a 22 year old
graduate student, I've only just saved enough money (from my assistantship) to
consider spending on leisure items (a portable gas range was particularly hard
to say no to at a garage sale).

I'm greatly comforted by his opinion on books though. I _never_ sell my books
(except really bad textbooks). So, I've already accumulated a somewhat large
library. I was considering donating it to a library, but I'll think more about
that now.

~~~
jff
I'll argue that you'll get more utility out of a portable gas range than out
of almost any book randomly pulled from your shelf, or any 10 books. I could
go to my bookshelf right now and probably select 20 books that I have never
more than glanced through and quite honestly will likely never read. Maybe
someday I'll find a burning need to refer to a VAX architecture manual, but if
I want to go camp out even once or twice a year, the portable range would be
more useful.

Now, a portable gas range won't get you the massive HN/San Francisco cred
you'll get from a house full of books, that's a given.

~~~
philwelch
I dunno. Camping can be pretty boring, you should probably bring something to
read. A VAX architecture manual sounds interesting.

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wensing
I've moved 7 times in 9 years and figure I've discarded, given away or sold
over 2,500 lbs worth of stuff. Crazy when I think of it this way. Feels great.

------
saurabh
George Carlin also had something to say about "stuff".

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac>

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solarbunny
If a cluttered desk signs a cluttered mind, of what then is an empty desk a
sign? / A. Einstein

------
the_economist
The things you own come to own you. --Tyler Durden

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acchow
Do any other software engineers here (who rent) have almost nothing outside
clothing, laptop and smartphone?

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robrenaud
Replace every occurrence of stuff with shit and the article works even better.

