[...] a while ago (apparently nearly two months ago actually), I read The Hidden Costs of Stuff on Get Rich Slowly and it got me thinking about my own relationship with my stuff. I don’t [...]

[...] choices Amanda Adams has contributed several great guest articles to Get Rich Slowly, including The Hidden Costs of Stuff and Getting Value From the Things You Own. When Amanda mentioned that she’s involved with [...]

[...] 21st: The hidden costs of stuff (a guest post from [...]

Is it any wonder that stuff accumulates in our lives?

Add to that fact that practically every TV program we watch, every movie we view is designed to make us WANT STUFF.

While the messages might be specific to some product, the subliminal message we are constantly being exposed to is that a person’s value is based on how much money they make and what they own as a result of their jobs.

Why on earth do you think that the last 40 years we’ve been exposed to mocking hippies?

Their crime wasn’t political, it was being anti-consumers.

Modern people can’t understand why the Egyptian society spend such a large amount of its wealth building pyramids.

Future societies will not be able to understand why today’s industrial society have focused our attention on acquiring STUFF.

What you own owns YOU!

I moved across the country with 6 boxes of personal possessions. I now live in an apartment that is so small, I can open the fridge without getting out of bed.

I have much to be grateful for. I just wish I had reached this point in my life thirty years ago. Peace of mind is a wonderful thing!

For those of you with kids, don’t do this to them. I am an example of one outcome, the other likely outcome would be an inability to form attachments, which can be very bad if this carries through to pets or people. Something like the “I don’t want this” bag might be good.

Cell phones: What sold me on cell phones long ago was being in a caravan and the lead car breaking down on the side of the road. The van driver pulled out a button-encrusted handset on the end of a black coiled wire, and called for a tow truck. 20 minutes (and being passed by nearly a dozen police cars that seemed not to notice what looked like a minor accident) here comes the truck. This has proved to be useful on a number of occasions, such as flat tires on the freeway and similar situations.

I am one of those for whom the cell phone has integrated wholly into my life. It actually causes problems at times that some of my friends don’t have them. Last-minute foul-ups cannot be quickly communicated to those people, I have to wait for them to call me when I’m overdue, or leave a message on the home phone and home they call to check. I keep usage limited in social situations, but it is generally expected that when gathering as a group someone is going to get a call because of delays or directions being needed.

Time to see if I can force myself to clear more clutter.

[...] Nickel has issues with Dish Network. JD published a guest post about hidden costs of products. [...]

[...] JD published a guest post onthe hidden costs of stuff. [...]

[...] that since JD guest posted elsewhere, we should highlight a guest post on GRS – this post on the hidden cost of stuff comes to us courtesy of Amanda, a Colorado tech writer and an activist for children with congenital [...]

[...] Rich Slowly – The Hidden Costs of Stuff. This article is not just about the actual dollar amount that things cost, but the toll physical [...]

Time poor. I like the term. I feel that way all the time.

-Mike

I try to live just as I did in college, because I was pretty happy there with no stuff. Why should buying stuff now make me any happier?

I am just amazed when people don’t realize that they don’t own their stuff, their stuff owns them. They are forced to stay in jobs they hate because they have to be able to pay for their overpriced car or other “stuff”.

Our local Penney’s opens at 4 am on Black Friday just so people can get an early start – on GETTING MORE STUFF.

I’ve moved a lot in my working life and spent months when my parents died cleaning our their house.

That’s an experience you definitely don’t want as your kids’ last memory of you. It’s soul-crushing.

I can hardly think of a better training device than estate sales, incidentally, so long as you don’t buy anything. Just the experience of seeing what people valued and devoted their now-gone lives to collecting and maintaining will do it.

Add in a few of those long-distance moves, and I find I’ve evolved over the years into a bone-deep minimalist.

Sweeping out clutter and dragging home fewer shopping bags seems to inspire primal dread in the majority of Americans for the very reason people on this blog embrace these same disciplines. They force you to confront your real life, as you actually live it day to day with the money and space you actually have.

This mind shift is liberating to the point of exhilaration once you really “get it”. Cheers to Amanda for a great pre-holiday meditation.

So…do we all have our short, well-edited shopping lists to keep the holidays in their place? That’s my project for this afternoon.

This is very timely for me – only recently have I realized that I am not getting any pleasure from “keeping up with the Jonses” and a simple life will probably give me the greatest amount of joy (and considerably reduce my stress).

I am in the process of starting a blog to document my quest to pay off debt and simplify. Tips like these will really help me on my way.

It’s also a bit discouraging when people (no doubt hocked to the eyeballs in debt!) look down on me for getting by with so little. Reading posts like Amanda’s is so encouraging for me.

Growing up we didn’t have a lot and the best memories are those that involved outdoor (free) games. Even so, I must admit there were certain times, when we did feel the slight sting of being poor and not being able to have the nice things that others had.

As a result, I over-compensated in my early adulthood. I’m successful (by my own standards), I love my job and I have a little disposable income, and for a few years my thirst for more and more stuff couldn’t be satisfied.

I just consider myself lucky that even in what I now think of as my “acquisition” stage, I was deathly afraid of being poor in debt. Although I could have used my money more wisely, at least I managed to stay out of debt.