On Buying Stuff for Your Stuff
This is part 6 in a longer series of how we are taking 7 months to assess our lifestyles & try to be more intentional with our time and resources. If you are just joining us, you can start your binge here and this will all make more sense. Also, just a reminder, we started on the 5th of May, so each new experiment will coincide with the 5th of the month.
"After a while, you find yourself having to buy stuff for your stuff." This was one of my dad's frequent sayings as I grew up--one I never fully understood until we purchased our first house. Making one purchase can ensure more purchases down the road. The math is easy:
replacing our broken oven = new oven + a range plug + another range plug because the first one was wrong + oven cleaner + a magic eraser.
kayaks = paddles + life jackets + rope + roof caddy + reflection tape + sponges for cleaning
dog = don't even get me started...
We constantly find ourselves "needing" things for our thing, whether it is to store, fix, clean, or replace.
As we entered into Month Two of our Seven Experiment, I knew that we had to take a hard look at what we owned. We are very loosely following Jen Hatmaker's Seven Experiment, so we looked at her method for guidance. She decided to give 7 items away a day, resulting in at least 217 items over a month's time. (I can't fully remember, but she was talking about big ticket items--not simply counting each article of clothing as one item.) After considering this, we felt that 217 was just an arbitrary number. If we were further along in life with a million kids like Jen, we probably would have collected that much excess, but in reality, we didn't want to give away for the sake of purging--we wanted to give away what we don't use or need.
Fun Fact: Did you know that the storage unit industry was worth $38 billion last year alone? Statistics predict that 1 of 11 households rents at least one self-storage unit. Let that sink in: Americans pay $38 billion to keep the items we do not want or cannot fit in our house. Source
As we sat down to discuss month two, we both stated "We don't even have a lot of things, and we use everything we own." Yet, as soon as we spoke those words, we knew that was exactly where we needed to start. Relative depravity is real, and when we compare ourselves to bigger lifestyles, bigger budgets, bigger houses, it does feel like we don't have too much in comparison.
But comparison isn't reality. Reality is sitting on our shelves collecting dust.
Month Two was in the works: we decided we would spend the next month assessing what we own and what we use. Then, we came up with a really complicated system: in 30 days we'd take an inventory of every room in our house, put a colorful dot sticker on every item we own, and remove said sticker when used. We gave ourselves 6 months, assuming if we haven't used something in 6 months, we can't honestly justify it. (Although, my Christmas decorations are the exception! I may decorate for Christmas in July just to ensure we remove the stickers! )
For privacy's sake, I'm not listing every item we own, but I will say we have over 2,000 items in our house currently. We "stickered" our kitchen (including fridge & pantry), living room, guest bathroom, William's office, my office, our bedroom, our bathroom, the coat closet, the utility room, attic, and yard searching for our excess.
ex·cess
ikˈses,ˈekses/
noun
1.
an amount of something that is more than necessary, permitted, or desirable2.
lack of moderation in an activity, especially eating or drinking.
(Source: Google, duh)
Not surprising to anyone who knows us, our biggest collection was our books, coming in at over 200 total after donating/selling about 60. Of course, clothing & kitchen/pantry items bulked up the list too. We laughed hard at these next contenders: over 70 pens (William can't say no to a free pen) and 44 hand towels (which, if y'all only knew how often we get to the bottom of the stack, you'd understand). Actually, the hand towels are a good segue to my next point. See, one more reason to keep those suckers around!
In contrast to our first month, which required almost constant thought about what we were digesting, this exercise has been less time consuming, yet has offered the same amount of personal questioning. With our entire home covered in stickers, we have had to ask ourselves, "How often do we need to use an item to consider it necessary for our lives?" Or, "What is the point of getting rid of things that we already own?" I mean, of course, we are taking a much harder look at what we are adding to our house & buying during this month--and I think that is important. But what is the good in getting rid of hand towels...or for William, pens? What are our options there? Donation? Landfill? Giving items away? Repurposing/recycling? I can't think of someone or a donation center that would want our used-to-be-white hand towels. And there is no way I'm DIY-ing a wind-chime of empty pens for my front porch. Perhaps, more importantly, I do not see any harm in having them neatly stored away if we are using them. So it begs the larger question: what excess is negative excess? How do we responsibly take ownership of what we have, donate what we do not need, and consider what we do not use, while being good stewards of the earth & not creating more waste just for the sake of "spring cleaning?"
We haven't come up with a good answer to those questions yet. Perhaps in 6 months we'll have a better understanding.
Until then, if you come over for dinner, ignore the stickers on your silverware. And if you're looking for a pen, William's your guy.
