Stuff sucks

I have too much stuff. I have too much stuff in my office at home and too much stuff in my cubicle at work. Most of it is stuff I don’t use all that often. Some I probably don’t need at all.

Tyler Hurst doesn’t like stuff and I agree with him. Why do we all have too much stuff? Because as Tyler points out, our economy is increasingly built on consumerism, which means buying, selling and having stuff. Seriously though, what do we do with all this stuff? We put it somewhere. Up until a couple of years ago, we put it in huge McMansions we couldn’t really afford.

This is part of the problem with Phoenix (yes, I’m connecting this rant with Phoenix in some way). People are so addicted to stuff and the space needed to store it that we all think we need giant houses in the suburbs.

We don’t need that.

Try living in a smaller space with less stuff. That’s one way we can get the critical mass we need to live in CenPho. People trading some stuff and space for a vibrant, connected environment. Yeah, urban living is less dense with a little less living space. But you don’t need all the square footage you think you do. Your stuff does, but who’s in charge here? Get rid of the crap you don’t need and go interact with your city. That’s what I’m going to try to do more of in 2010.

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View Comments to “Stuff sucks”

WesleyTech 14 December 2009 at 11:09 am #

So are you selling your unneeded stuff and moving downtown?
Matthew Petro 14 December 2009 at 12:49 pm #

We'd like to! It's gonna happen as soon as we can afford to do it. Maybe if I sold all my extra stuff…
David Bickford 16 December 2009 at 7:05 am #

Even worse than have a big house full of junk is having a 2 or 3-car garage, filling it with junk, and then having to park vehicles in the driveway or on the street because the garage can't be used for its intended purpose.

You might be interested in this recent NYT article on the self-storage industry:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/06/magazine/06se...
Chris Lee 28 December 2009 at 11:31 pm #

I'm totally with you on this. I hoard way too much. Not like the lady in Mumford hoarding but any hoarding is too much.

Too many clothes, shoes, books, movies, whatever I'll never use. Too many emails in my inbox/folders or files on my hard drive that I'll never use either.

I need to make 2010 the year of deleting/getting rid of stuff.

Heather & I are also trying to block the incoming stuff as well. Instead of getting decent stuff that we might use a bit, we're trying to wait until we find stuff that we absolutely love. Make every shirt I own my “favorite” shirt…
Xavierism 12 January 2010 at 7:32 am #

I agreed with every thing you wrote up until you included shoes on that list. C'mon! One can never have enough shoes!!!!!!!
Xavierism 12 January 2010 at 7:34 am #

Great post! I remember reading this post last year and thought I saved the link to your blog. Wrong! Glad I found it. I'm writing a blog post and remembered the topic of this post. Hope you're off to a fab year.

Cheers!
Matthew Petro 17 January 2010 at 11:45 pm #

You make a good point about digital stuff. With hard drive prices at less than a penny per gigabyte, it's so easy to collect a huge amount of music, photos, movies, emails, etc, etc.

I like the idea of being proactive and blocking the incoming stuff. It seems like once stuff gets in your house, it's ten times harder to get rid of it than if you just didn't get it at all.
Matthew Petro 17 January 2010 at 11:48 pm #

I'm a fan of shoes, but there's definitely some pairs in my closet that are old and just need to go. But have I made the time to clean them out? Nope. That's something I need to work on getting better at.
Matthew Petro 17 January 2010 at 11:49 pm #

Thanks! So far, I feel like I'm stumbling into 2010 instead of running ahead. Hopefully I'll change that soon!
tdhurst 7 March 2010 at 11:31 pm #

I'm selling all my stuff. Want to buy it?
Yuri Artibise 7 March 2010 at 11:54 pm #

Having a three car garage is a problem in and of itself…
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 8:11 am #

Hell no. Unless you have something really cool, like an old painting with an undiscovered original copy of the Constitution hidden in the frame.
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 8:14 am #

My theory was that Phoenicans filled their garages with crap because we generally don't have basements to put stuff in. Or if we want to actually put cars in our garages, we fill up storage units.
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 8:16 am #

Not if you have three cars. But I can see your point. The sprawl of housing across the vast land we have here has enabled developers to build giant McMansions with 3 and 4 car garages.
tdhurst 18 March 2010 at 8:44 am #

No, but that sounds like a killer movie plot. We should make it. Again.
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 9:34 am #

It works for Hollywood. We might as well get in on the big money.
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 3:11 pm #

Hell no. Unless you have something really cool, like an old painting with an undiscovered original copy of the Constitution hidden in the frame.
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 3:14 pm #

My theory was that Phoenicans filled their garages with crap because we generally don't have basements to put stuff in. Or if we want to actually put cars in our garages, we fill up storage units.
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 3:16 pm #

Not if you have three cars. But I can see your point. The sprawl of housing across the vast land we have here has enabled developers to build giant McMansions with 3 and 4 car garages.
tdhurst 18 March 2010 at 3:44 pm #

No, but that sounds like a killer movie plot. We should make it. Again.
Matthew Petro 18 March 2010 at 4:34 pm #

It works for Hollywood. We might as well get in on the big money.