How much do we need?

[french frank]

I was staggered at the implications of this story about the rise in 'self-storage' as a booming industry, especially this bit:

"The industry is the product of huge sociological shifts.

Danny Dorling, professor of geography at Oxford University, says we have six times more "stuff" than the generation before us.

This stuff - clothes, furniture, technology and knick-knacks - has to be crammed into some of the smallest dwellings in Europe."

Pretty much an indictment of the consumer society where we have all this 'stuff' that we don't need.

[teamsaint]

its also a damning indictment of policies that enable people to buy all this stuff, but makes it very difficult to buy a home, or one big enough to keep any stuff.

I wonder if there is a specialist market waiting for people who need space for their outsize CD collections....... whistleysmileything........

It could be called something like.............oh I don't know...........Box set?


(Incidentally, I would love to see the evidence for "six times more stuff".........and who are "We?"

I very much doubt that 20 somethings own or buy lots more stuff than fortysomethings do, or did.

[french frank]

I very much doubt that 20 somethings own or buy lots more stuff than fortysomethings do, or did.

I'd guess the 40-50-60s are the 'We' that have 6X more than our parents and are renting this storage space, not the 20-year-olds.

And whatever 'hardships' younger people now have compared with their parents, go back a few more generations and you would find comparable hardship. Perhaps an affluent society is what makes hardship worse?

[teamsaint]

Well I think you have it right about who the "We " is. Or are .

the thing about relative poverty in a supposedly affluent society is known in the trade as the " Beef Oven!" proposition, I believe !!!

any old how,we are dumping our 20 somethings into a pretty rotten economic situation, where the perceived or actual difficulty of affording decent housing, (mortgaged or rented), leads people inexorably down the instant gratification (via debt) route.

Seems we are storing up problems or the future.............

[jean]

Some of the smallest dwellings in Europe? Has he never been to Poland?

[Serial_Apologist]

Most of my furniture was inherited down the family from a grandfather who was an antique dealer, so in a sense I'm lucky. Much product designed for the consumer society, post-WW2, consists of what one might call consumer non-durables. Planned obsolescence probably started with clothes before going onto larger products as earnings grew in the baby boom generation. My father kept most of his clothes, all the way back from the 1930s. Some I donated to an amateur theatre company for their period productions, but I've kept and done repairs on a heavy-duty sports jacket I recall him wearing when I was a nipper, which fits me perfectly; I doubt if you could buy a more suitable item for keeping out the winter chill today because lighter fabrics correspond with today's central heating systems. Menswear styles didn't change much before the 1960s, unlike women's, then during that decade changed drastically every year. One can hold out with a sort-of one-person revolt against consumerism and stick up two fingers at fashion in a sort of socialism-in-one-person gesture, but it's dependent on what remains of durable products from an earlier age when British-based clothiers catered for the higher earning power of their social superiors, or charity shops in posh districts. But boy, I wish that army greatcoat I bought in the hippy early 1970s hadn't succumbed to clothes moths last year - it was my final insurance against homelessless - whatever happened to army surplus shops?

[amateur51]

Most of my furniture was inherited down the family from a grandfather who was an antique dealer, so in a sense I'm lucky. Much product designed for the consumer society, post-WW2, consists of what one might call consumer non-durables. Planned obsolescence probably started with clothes before going onto larger products as earnings grew in the baby boom generation. My father kept most of his clothes, all the way back from the 1930s. Some I donated to an amateur theatre company for their period productions, but I've kept and done repairs on a heavy-duty sports jacket I recall him wearing when I was a nipper, which fits me perfectly; I doubt if you could buy a more suitable item for keeping out the winter chill today because lighter fabrics correspond with today's central heating systems. Menswear styles didn't change much before the 1960s, unlike women's, then during that decade changed drastically every year. One can hold out with a sort-of one-person revolt against consumerism and stick up two fingers at fashion in a sort of socialism-in-one-person gesture, but it's dependent on what remains of durable products from an earlier age when British-based clothiers catered for the higher earning power of their social superiors, or charity shops in posh districts. But boy, I wish that army greatcoat I bought in the hippy early 1970s hadn't succumbed to clothes moths last year - it was my final insurance against homelessless - whatever happened to army surplus shops?

Do you remember Laurence Corner near Warren Street tube, S_A?! It was a tardis-like shop full of much clothing oddness and usefulness. And once you'd made your latest discovery you could totter down Drummond Street nearby & scoff yourself to a standstill on Southern Indian vegetarian food at Diwana Bhelpoori House for under a fiver.

http://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/laurence-corner-army-surplus

[Serial_Apologist]

Do you remember Laurence Corner near Warren Street tube, S_A?! It was a tardis-like shop full of much clothing oddness and usefulness. And once you'd made your latest discovery you could totter down Drummond Street nearby & scoff yourself to a standstill on Southern Indian vegetarian food at Diwana Bhelpoori House for under a fiver.

http://www.londonremembers.com/memor...r-army-surplus

No, as happens, Ams - I never ventured further up the Tottenham Court Rd than the UFO Club, late 60s, and was out of London apart from visits until moving back in 2004.

[MrGongGong]

And once you'd made your latest discovery you could totter down Drummond Street nearby & scoff yourself to a standstill on Southern Indian vegetarian food at Diwana Bhelpoori House for under a fiver.

Diwana is still going strong
and great thing too IMV

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

In terms of Alpine Symphony recordings, I have more than 75 times as much "stuff" as I actually need.

[ardcarp]

'Stuff' isn't necessarily worth a lot. Our house is in itself a storage unit, full of items from older and younger generations of the family. They (the items, that is) fall into several categories:

1. Things You Might Need One Day (but probably won't and if you did you'd be lucky to find Them).

2. Things of Sentimental Value (but which you'd probably never give a second thought to if chucked out)

3. Things technically belonging to offspring who have left home but don't have room for them (but which they won't let you dispose of).

4. Books, sheet-music, scores, records, cassette tapes and CDs in staggering quantities (some acquired by devious means) that you have every intention of reading/playing/listening to one day (but you have calculated it will take several lifetimes to achieve and you know you only have about one-eighth of a lifetime left on an optimistic scale).

5. Things that Mrs A. would chuck out but I won't and (more significantly) vice-versa.

I could go on, but really it's not a question of affluence. It's just that people fall into the categories of hoarders and non-hoarders. In spite of the thread-topic, I come across many families these days who are totally minimalist, and whose houses are so bare (arid, sparse) that it makes you wonder what they do apart from sitting in the single chair and gazing at the laminate floor.

Hoarding, or to be fairer, not having willpower to make decisions about stuff, is probably an inherited trait. Clearing my dear late mother's house required a convoy of skips, and among the treasures were 7 defunct electric irons..several pre-war....which she probably hoped could be repaired one day, and a bag containing 50 black satin Women's League of Health and Beauty knickers. Not to mention the jam-jars, suitcases, shoes, shopping bags....well, bless her is all I can say.

Some couples of a certain age have a spasm of loft, shed and garage clearance because they don't want stuff to be a burden on their offspring when they die.

Stuff that.

[jean]

When a colleague retired, she presented me with the complete works of Cicero in a handsome eighteenth-century calf-bound edition.

I thought at the time that was a strange time for her to get rid of the books, because now she would actually have time to read them

It wasn't until I retired myself that I realised that's the point at which you know you aren't going to.

[teamsaint]

'Stuff' isn't necessarily worth a lot. Our house is in itself a storage unit, full of items from older and younger generations of the family. They (the items, that is) fall into several categories:

1. Things You Might Need One Day (but probably won't and if you did you'd be lucky to find Them).

2. Things of Sentimental Value (but which you'd probably never give a second thought to if chucked out)

3. Things technically belonging to offspring who have left home but don't have room for them (but which they won't let you dispose of).

4. Books, sheet-music, scores, records, cassette tapes and CDs in staggering quantities (some acquired by devious means) that you have every intention of reading/playing/listening to one day (but you have calculated it will take several lifetimes to achieve and you know you only have about one-eighth of a lifetime left on an optimistic scale).

5. Things that Mrs A. would chuck out but I won't and (more significantly) vice-versa.

I could go on, but really it's not a question of affluence. It's just that people fall into the categories of hoarders and non-hoarders. In spite of the thread-topic, I come across many families these days who are totally minimalist, and whose houses are so bare (arid, sparse) that it makes you wonder what they do apart from sitting in the single chair and gazing at the laminate floor.

Hoarding, or to be fairer, not having willpower to make decisions about stuff, is probably an inherited trait. Clearing my dear late mother's house required a convoy of skips, and among the treasures were 7 defunct electric irons..several pre-war....which she probably hoped could be repaired one day, and a bag containing 50 black satin Women's League of Health and Beauty knickers. Not to mention the jam-jars, suitcases, shoes, shopping bags....well, bless her is all I can say.

Some couples of a certain age have a spasm of loft, shed and garage clearance because they don't want stuff to be a burden on their offspring when they die.

Stuff that.

Post of the day contender.

But can you explain why I envy people with those minimalist houses, but don't actually want mine to be like that?

Am I a post minimalist? And how does this tie in with all that old post that seems to be hanging around ?

[amateur51]

Diwana is still going strong
and great thing too IMV

According to Christian Woolmar writing about HS2 in the current London Review of Books, Diwana & Drummond Street are in trouble if HS2 goes ahead as currently proposed.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/christian-wolmar/whats-the-point-of-hs2

Eat up while you can seems sound advice.

[Serial_Apologist]

Post of the day contender.

But can you explain why I envy people with those minimalist houses, but don't actually want mine to be like that?

Am I a post minimalist? And how does this tie in with all that old post that seems to be hanging around ?

A post minimalist would perhaps be someone who agreed with the privatisation of the postal service... ??

I share your envy of those people, TS, if only, in my case, because of my being inveterately untidy. I am one of those people whose abode achieves proto-minimalist perfection twice a year, after my having spent a couple of frantic days engrossed in scrupulous tidying, cleaning, polishing and sorting. After this it is, for a short while, as if some wonderful person has kindly broken in and re-organised my life for me... until, that is, anything I need to lay my hands just refuses to be found.