{"id":235928,"date":"2018-05-19T09:00:14","date_gmt":"2018-05-19T16:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/?p=235928"},"modified":"2023-12-05T14:23:28","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T21:23:28","slug":"cluttered-lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/cluttered-lives\/","title":{"rendered":"The cluttered lives of middle-class Americans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Long-time readers are familiar with my decade-long war on Stuff<\/a>. I was raised in a cluttered home. From a young age, I was a collector. (Some might even say a hoarder!) After Kris and I got married, I began to acquire adult-level quantities of Stuff. When we moved to a larger house, I found ways to acquire even more<\/em> Stuff. I owned thousands of books, thousands of comic books, hundreds of compact discs, and scads of other crap.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I’d had enough. A decade ago, I began the s-l-o-w<\/em> process of de-cluttering.<\/p>\n

While I still bring new Stuff into the house — Kim would tell you I bring too much<\/em> Stuff home — I’m not nearly so acquisitive as I used to be. In fact, for the past decade I’ve purged far more than I’ve acquired. And that process continues, week by week, month by month, year by year.<\/p>\n

<\/span>The Cluttered Lives of the American Middle Class<\/span><\/h2>\n

Turns out, I’m not the only one fighting this battle. Many Americans struggle with clutter. This is one reason for the popularity of the simplicity movement. When I visit my friends who live in tiny houses, they rejoice at the lack of Stuff in their lives. And it’s why books like Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up<\/em><\/a> become popular bestsellers. (That book is great, by the way. Here’s my review<\/a> from my personal site.)<\/p>\n

A while ago, I stumbled on a video that documents the work of a group of anthropologists from UCLA. These researchers visited the homes of 32 typical American families. They wanted to look at how people interacted with their environments, at how they used space. They also wanted to look at how dual-income, middle-class families related to their material possessions. They systematically documented the Stuff people own, where they keep it, and how they use it.<\/p>\n

This team produced a book called Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century<\/em><\/a>, which records their findings. They also produced this twenty-minute video that provides an overview of the results:<\/p>\n