Buy Less Stuff
September 12, 2006 by Greg
With so many cool things to spend your money on, it is easy to collect too much stuff. Apartment therapy warns against living out this all too common scenario…
Now however, most of the people I visit are embarrassed to have people over because they have too much stuff. Call it clutter or lack of organization or what you will, but the basic fact remains that almost every one of us is battling a completely opposite problem than before, keeping too much stuff out of our lives.
Instead they recommend changing focus…
Now, when we work hard and aim for success, it shouldn’t be to accumulate more and more stuff; it should be for something higher: quality of life.
Read the whole article here.
Quality of life, and quality of booze.
This is something I’ve been trying to do for years. Partially from moving around frequently, partially just as a personal philosophy. I always think of something my father once told me: “The things you own end up owning you.”
This is especially and obviously true of anything that you go into debt for (cars, houses, credit card debt for other things), because you end up working to pay for them– they almost literally own you. But it’s also true of little things. Everything takes some amount of time (dusting, flipping the mattress, or watering the plants) and/or money (electricity, repairs) from you. But everything takes up space, and space takes up money and time.
Lastly, useless clutter actually causes low-level stress for me, so it directly reduces my quality of life just by being there. I suspect this is true of most people, whether they realize it or not.
I just heard that same quote somewhere else.. maybe Fight Club? Anyway, it’s a goodun.