Blog Post

Mostly this is a blog dedicated to cataloging my stuff, but I thought I might supplement that with an occasional blog about other people blogging (or reporting) about stuff.

I've just started looking into this today, and it looks like there's a lot out there about owning more and about owning less, so this should be fun.

But before I really begin to pour into discussing articles--something I'm new to and will have to study before I can really even begin--I suppose I might go on about a brief history of why I own so much stuff.

I blame my grandparents. And the American Dream.

There. That was pretty short, wasn't it?


I suppose you could say that my parents are the actual reason I own too much, but I feel rather strongly that it's something they acquired from their parents. And, in point of fact, I'd like to propose that it's the Great Depression's fault.

See, the Great Depression, at least from the what-I-recall-from-high-school historian's point of view, was a great time of very little.  There wasn't much food to go around, and there either wasn't much stuff, or you had to get rid of it trying to afford food or whatever.  When the Great Depression ended, everyone over reacted.


Well, when World War II ended and suddenly there was stuff everywhere and everyone could afford it, then everyone overreacted to it.  There has only been increasing amounts of stuff since then, and that wave of 'needneedneedwantwantwant' simply hasn't ended yet.  Obviously companies have done their damnedest to keep this wave going, and there's a decent chance that the Great Recession (or whatever silly name we're going to retroactively apply to These Dire Economic Times) will help cure us of this obsession, but for now it's still ongoing.

What does this have to do with my grandparents? Well, they grew up during the Great Depression, and when the world went buying-crazy after WWII, they were there right along with everyone else in the US.

My father's parents won't buy anything unless it's on sale. But if it is on sale, they will buy anything.  Tools, TVs, Pez dispensers, Elvis memorabilia, antique windows; if you can buy it at a garage sale, my grandparents have probably given it for Christmas.

My other grandmother was always a bit more subtle about it.  Her condo was clean (almost to a fault), and there were glass-fronted cupboards with neatly-displayed china birds in it.  But when we cleaned out her condo to move her into elderly care, we discovered that the closet, which had looked so tidy, was in fact full of things packed into shoe boxes, which were then wrapped in two plastic bags and stored in careful piles.

Given that these odd collecting trends were what they grew up with, is it any wonder that my mother has a pile of antique quilts that reaches to the ceiling (actually, it might be two piles, although it IS a low ceiling), or that my dad's room contains more boxed-up 3-d/stereo paraphernalia by volume than empty space?

And since that's what I grew up with, does it surprise anyone that it took me half an hour to go through half my boxes in the attic looking for a black skirt to wear? And this was me actually focused on the task at hand, and not getting distracted into, say, reading the books I'd found there.

Since 80% of my stuff is in the attic, I don't feel too badly off with the amount of stuff that exists in my daily life, and with only a few exceptions I love or use everything that I have around me.

But then again, putting everything in the attic means that I still own it, so perhaps my soul is still weighed down by its existence.