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Your Possessions Own You
By Brick | February 19, 2008
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Last week I was watching Fight Club (very cool movie!). I was struck by one line in particular. At one point in the movie, the character Tyler Durden (played by Brad Pitt) says:
You don’t own the things-the things own you.
Source: Fight Club
Now I think Durden was making a broad commentary on our corporately controlled consumer culture, suggesting that it destroys individuality. I however, started to think about this notion in a much more shallow yet pragmatic sense: let’s say you buy a car. You think you bought it to get you from A to B, and no doubt it fulfills that need. However, besides what you needed (to get from A to B) you now need to put gas in the car, wash it, buy insurance for it, take it in for scheduled maintenance and repairs, etc. The car, in a very real sense, owns you! There are so many possessions like this - think about your house!
One logical deduction is that the more stuff you have, the more time, money and attention it costs you to maintain it all. Let this idea sit with you for a while, and you might start to consider that less (stuff) is perhaps more (life). I am not saying we should not own things - we should. What I am suggesting is that we should be careful in what we choose to own, we should plan and actively manage what we own. Call it stuff management.
It’s All Too Much
I read Peter Walsh’s It’s All Too Much over the weekend. Walsh is a professional organizer and is probably best known for his part in TLC’s Clean Sweep television series. In the show, Walsh helps homeowners transform areas overrun by clutter to functional, organized living spaces. In an interesting coincidence, the quote that precedes the introduction in his book is exactly the same quote from Fight Club that resonated with me the week before!
Walsh’s claim that an over abundance of possessions (especially the clutter) costs us money, time, physical space and emotion is consistent with the thought that we don’t have stuff - it has us. One idea I liked from the book was that getting rid of the clutter does not actually start with cleaning up. While that seems like a logical first step, it would be like implementing a time management system by creating a gigantic to-do list. Just like a good time management system, we need to start with planning and prioritization before we start cleaning up.
Vision
Look beyond the clutter and imagine the life you want to be living. What does your ideal living space that supports that life look like? How do you want to feel when you walk into the place? It may sound like overkill, but consider that you will probably spend a considerable amount of time in this space. The space and the life you want to live should be consistent or at least complimentary. For example, when I decided to follow the tenets of The 4-Hour Workweek, I imagined a home office as a neat, hyper-efficient work space. Elimination would take the form of minimal visual distraction: there would be no clutter, required items would be filed neatly. My desk drawers would be tidy and not full - just the essentials. Flat surfaces would be clear. Automation would take the form of a single high end computer, a wireless LAN, a single printer/scanner/fax, and a cordless speaker phone. Most importantly, besides the desk, chair and filing cabinet, that is all I would have in my home office. That vision of my home office gave me the feeling of getting things done and doing business.
Function
The next step is to get it on paper. For example, by documenting what my home office space is being used for today vs. my vision, I can easily determine what has to go. Here is my home office room function chart:
At this point, you have a plan and can start eliminating stuff and cleaning up. Now I can start cleaning up!
I highly recommend It’s All Too Much, as it will go into this entire process at a greater level of detail. It also covers strategies for cleaning and organizing, dealing with emotional attachment to items, and tips for handling clutter on a room by room basis.
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Topics: Clutter |
February 20th, 2008 at 11:53 am
But what if you live with someone who feels that all those CDs, mass-market paperbacks, and cassette tapes “will be worth something some day”?
Sigh.
February 21st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
“Fight Club” is a fantastic movie - one of my favorites… sometimes, when I survey my house, I remember the narrator saying, “What kind of dining set defines me as a person?” LOL!
I agree with your points on stuff owning us. Are you familiar with the voluntary simplicity (VS) movement? It’s right along those lines and well worth reading about. It is all about how to make deliberate choices about what *really* matters and eliminate everything else, and they have a lot of stuff about decluttering.
The only downside to VS is that it’s closely tied to tightwaddery. While they also conclude that you should work less & own less, they assume that this means earning less (it could almost be called voluntary poverty). They don’t know about, or don’t believe in, options like the 4HWW where you can work less and earn MORE.
Another point that I thought might interest you along these lines - I don’t know if you’ve read Robert Kiyosaki’s stuff, but he defines cars and houses and other such items as liabilities, instead of assets. In his system, a liability is anything that takes money out of your pocket every month… and that is the case for most “stuff.” Although, he doesn’t say to not own liabilities… just to make sure you’ve got a passive-income-generating asset to pay for them - very much in line with 4HWW.
Thanks for the post, I’m going to think over that vision & function method of decluttering!
February 21st, 2008 at 8:20 pm
@Jennifer: It could be worse, the person you are living with could have an 8-track tape collection they can’t part with (did you know, at one time they used to build cars with 8-track tape players!!!). BTW Walsh totally addresses the “it might be worth something some day” issue (chances are it won’t), as well as excellent strategies for dealing with emotional attachment to stuff.
@Hilary: Thanks for the references, I will definitely check them all out. The term “tightwaddery” is making me laugh for some reason!