Why Do Americans Have So Much Stuff?

162,702
94
Published 2023-04-11

All Comments (21)
  • @joykoski7111
    Adulting: When you avoid throwing out a really good box because, you know, it's a really good box.
  • My mother always said the more room you have the more stuff you collect.
  • @Nightshde-V2
    Part of the problem is the older generations holding onto useless items thinking their children will want it later on. A majority of my basement is now stuff that my parents keep pushing on me to take that they have been holding on to for years. I've gone through a purged quite a bit of it, but now the basement is being loaded up with stuff my wife is getting from her parent's house and she seems to have a much harder time letting go of items forcing me to build more shelving just to hold it all.
  • Are you familiar with the American concept of the "junk drawer"? It's an otherwise normal drawer, often in the kitchen, into which we toss every odd bit and rubber band which we have no current use for but which is so potentially useful that we're sure we'll desperately need it some day. It contains rubber bands, the remaining nail from that group of four we brought in from the garage but only ended up using three of them, that little screwdriver that's the perfect size for tightening the screws that hold handles onto our kitchen pans, that odd little piece of rubber that was guaranteed to loosen the tightest lid but turned out to only be useful for olive jar lids, and so on. Mine probably has 300,000 objects by itself. I can never find what I'm looking for but it's always a fun trip down memory lane whenever I rummage through it. You need one. Trust me.
  • I finally bought a home with a garage 6 years ago. I’ll never understand filling it with stuff. I love finally having a garage and not having to clear the snow off of my car!
  • @twocooneys
    Turns there's my dad who lived during the great depression and saved almost everything including a broken bolt. Which he later straightened and used in my presence. 😁
  • @rogue3398
    American here. When we bought our home, we found out what the previous owners did with the garage, as it has its own power and breaker box, with the breakers labeled things like "welder" and "air compressor". This makes another fun feature of our garage make more sense: the door is on the wrong side. This means it isn't actually possible to fit our car in the garage without magically turning it sideways... Or moving the washer and dryer, which is what we did. And we still have to literally back into the wall to make it fit. Still an improvement over the last home we lived in where the garage was too short for our car. I'm not entirely sure that the PNW knows what garages are supposed to be for.
  • @laurieross
    When I met my husband in my 40's, we both had our own households full of "stuff" (me, kid clutter, him camping, SCA, music, computersssss). When we joined households, the literal overflow was tremendous. Before we downsized in preparation for moving out of the US, we filled 2 extra large dumpsters with "stuff"and donated endless amounts to the local charity shops. Then we had to purge all his tools and any electronics that had 120 volt motors etc. It taught me a bunch about how much we own, and how it owns us right back. Now, living in Ireland (after Canada), I practice periodic clearing out days/weeks. Now, I have my eldest daughters boxes to content with, filling the shed!
  • @silence2314
    My parents left so much stuff crammed in the basement that I've gotten into the habit of checking it first before making any new purchases. Extension cord? Basement. Storage tub? Basement. Folding chairs? Basement. Filing cabinet? You guessed it. There were a few of those to choose from too. It's like Mary Poppin's bag or Doraemon's pouch. I think they vaguely had known that stuff was down there somewhere, but it was so much work to look for it they would usually just decide to buy a new one instead...
  • @rocdocs
    As a collector of things I am outraged and deeply embarrassed. Two lava lamps sit before me right now.
  • I'm in the process of de-cluttering my home, garage and basement. I've donated bags and bags of nice clothing, suits, and even a tuxedo that were too large for me. (I lost about 75 pounds 8 years ago, and have kept it off, since. On purpose, thank you. I only recently decided to get rid of the "just in case" pile) I've thrown away bags and bags of clothing that aren't worth saving, even as a donation. I've thrown away random crap out of the garage and basement. Simple junk and random items that were left from the previous owner, more than 20+ years ago in a 100+ year old home. "Well, it might come in handy one day!" It's a slow process to take on. If I look at all of the mess at once, I just get discouraged and say "Screw it, I'll just watch YouTube instead." Instead, I focus on clearing about 8 feet of one garage wall at a time: clearing out everything, sorting the good from the bad, and cleaning it all. My garage is an old addition. It's technically a 2 car garage; it's 2 deep, but only wide enough for one at a time. Half is laundry, the other half is a workshop. One entire wall is pegboard full of tools, odds and ends that are useful (gaskets, hinges, partial packages of hardware, etc.)
  • @cynthiaalver
    Back in the early 2000s I used to watch the show Clean Sweep which helped homeowners go through their stuff and everything went into one of three piles: keep, sell, toss. Great show. One episode I remember that had a lasting impression on me, the lady bought big, blue rubbish containers that are used for OUTSIDE trash, like five feet tall, and moved them into the bedroom to store clothing in because they had closets choked full, storage boxes cluttering every corner and wall in the room. In the end the show's lead, Peter Walsh, gently but firmly got her to open her eyes and SEE what was happening to her and her family. She climbed on board the Clean Sweep train and had a great new, clean, house and a bucket of money from the sell pile. Now, when I try to decide if I need something new or need to keep something I don't necessarily use, I just picture myself trying to fish that item out of a five foot rubbish barrel and my decision is instantly made. Thanks, Peter.
  • @Jeff_Lichtman
    You could do an entire video on yard sales, including all the different names for them: yard sale, garage sale, tag sale, rummage sale, white elephant sale... Moving gives an incentive to declutter. If you change homes frequently, you're more likely to get rid of stuff you don't use. If you live in the same place for years, you're more likely to have stuff you haven't touched in a long time.
  • @ntatenarin
    Moving to a one bedroom apartment, I had to get rid of a lot of stuff. Even though it was hard, I love it now because I feel so uncluttered. Not sure if this makes sense, but get rid of most of the stuff you're hoarding! It hurts at first, but feels better after a couple of days!
  • My husband inherited his hoarding mindset from growing up with his parents--who were hoarders. After his parents passed away, my husband kept as much crap from their house as he could. Living in a small 2 bedroom apartment, he has our spare bedroom filled to the ceiling! Every year I go through the small area that's MY things, & throw out bags of unnecessary items. I've thrown out some of his things, too. However, I can't get all the way through his stuff because they are packed so tight & I'm 65, not strong enough to pull down heavy tubs of crap. I know he has a stuffed cobra from his brother in a box, somewhere in that mess. He kept some of his mom's puzzles that he doesn't even know if all the pieces are there. If something ever happened to him, my kids are coming & we might have to rent a dumpster. Now, if he wants something, I ask where specifically will he put it & what will he use it for. That has cut down some of his adding to the hoard.
  • @Cypresssina
    I lived with a hoarder once. It was terrifying. I worried every night that some fire would start and the mix of her oxygen and piles of junk would cause a fast burning fire that would kill the whole house. I appreciate my mom's rule of getting rid of anything one hadn't used in a year so much more after that.
  • @JuniorFan08
    Since I retired 10 years ago, cleaning our basement and getting rid of "stuff" has been on my bucket list. Every year, I've said "this is the year." And so it goes.
  • Well, as I'm in the process of purging so I can move I can tell you that I have my stuff, my parent's stuff, my grandparents' stuff...and a bit of my great-grandparents stuff out in my garage. And I have to tell you, the only stuff I can quickly decide to dump or donate is my own stuff. All the rest of the stuff has to be 'gone through' in case someone else might want to add it to their own stuff.
  • I grew up in the midwest and my family had a 2 car garage, but at any given time only 1 side was useable. In the summer it housed the lawn mower, and in the winter the lawn mower was swapped with the snow blower. Now I live in Virginia, I have a 3 story townhouse with a 1 car garage, driveway, and 1 assigned parking spot. Currently the garage is filled with things. We don't have anywhere we can store things such as our Christmas tree, Halloween decorations, the LARGE trash cans and recycling bins, a chest freezer because we have to horde a supply of food now with all the random shortages... it's a lot. If I had to fit a car in the garage i'd be able to do it with a full day of shuffling things around and some extreme Tetris. The stuff filling happens gradually. It also tends to happens to those of us who make less money. You hold onto things because of the investment of purchase. You think 'oh but what if that one other thing breaks, this will be nice to have". Like my window air conditioner. Do I need it now? No. But if during the insane heat waves we get here in the USA, if my air con unit cant keep up I will drag that heavy thing up those 2 flights of stairs to make sure our bedrooms are livable during the summer. We've also loaned it out to good friends when their air con died and they were waiting for parts. You do what you can, because most of us don't make enough money to have much of a savings to quickly fix things. :)
  • I am a Certified Legal Assistant in The USA; I work mostly in Probate. I hear these stories all of the time. The solution? Let family quickly go through and take what they want. Then set up an estate auction, and it usually will be gone in one day. This works very well.