Things on a shelf can only bring so much joy, and as many of the TED talks (including one of my favorites, above) and other resources I've posted here demonstrate, our belongings often just get in the way. I started making this realization when I moved out of my childhood home and began accumulating more and more belongings. I couldn't really articulate it then, but I was starting to think that more wasn't always better. Over the course of this project, I have really enjoyed striving to return to a simpler lifestyle, and I think my happiness will only continue to grow.
To understand what I've really accomplished, I took stock of the things I cleared from my life and tried to keep track of where they would end up. A huge priority was to make sure I wasn't just throwing away a bunch of stuff I would re-buy again later. Luckily, after weighing my unwanted things, it seems that only six pounds of stuff has truly reached the end of its useful life at this point. Great news! Here's how my totals look, broken down by point of exchange:
- Planet XChange and Plato's Closet: I took a big box of winter clothes to my favorite resale shop in Knoxville then to the place next to Fancy Kroger here in Bloomington. In total, they took 5 lbs of clothes from me and gave me $67. I have another box of warm-weather clothes (17 lbs) that I'll take to these two places in the spring.
- McKay's: I dropped off 30 lbs of unwanted books, CDs, and DVDs at my favorite place, and I got about $80 in return! I hope someone else will enjoy my old stuff :)
- Goodwill: I ended up taking more stuff than expected to Goodwill. I had some furniture and other home goods to donate, plus the clothes that didn't sell at PXC or Plato's. Just this stuff weighed 71 lbs! In addition, I asked the guy at Goodwill where I should take toiletries (thinking Middle Way House?), and he said that GW actually sells tons of shampoo and lotion and stuff. That was 10 lbs. Then, I asked if my 4 lbs of craft supplies would sell, and he told me much of this is auctioned off online. They bundle big packages of supplies and price them for sale at www.shopgoodwill.com (that's where all the really good stuff goes, in case you were wondering!)
- MCSWMD: Yesterday, I took 37 lbs of old cleaning supplies to the Monroe County Solid Waste Management District. I learned that the District actually gives hazardous materials a second chance to be used! I put all the bottles on a shelf that people can pull from for FREE! If these things sit on the shelf for some given number of days, only then are they packaged for safe disposal at the landfill. Neat!
- Recycling: I got rid of some worthless papers that weighed about 11 lbs.
- Trash: There were a few things I got rid of that I just couldn't see anyone else reusing or recycling. I'll get rid of them now, and hopefully I will continue to reduce in the future to make up for the landfill impacts of these 6 lbs of trash.
- Total project outflow: 5 + 30 + 71 + 10 + 4 + 37 + 11 + 6 = 174 pounds of unwanted stuff
- Total project inflow: $67 + $80 = $147 + GOOD VIBES :)
Here's one last measure of my progress over the course of the semester. I've got photos of my living space before and after. Here's where I see how much further I'd have to take this to really be a minimalist. The truth is, I love living in a space that feels like home, so I've still got books on shelves and posters on walls and relics from my past. I can continue to explore the balance of stuff for the rest of my life, but I feel good right now knowing that I've simplified a bit, decreased my impact a bit, and grown in happiness through the process. Anyway, here's the pre- and post-pics. Not a huge difference, but certainly an improvement:
Slightly less furniture, a more tidy bookshelf, and cleaner workspace
Less furniture, a little less clutter
Less busy walls, more closet space (though newly filled with winter gear from storage)
Room for coats & summer stuff, camping gear more organized, no more toxic inhabitants
Now, if there's one thing I've learned through this exploration of stuff, it's that many Americans are really addicted to it. Myself certainly included to some degree. We can look to the storage industry, Black Friday, or even the financial crisis of 2008 for evidence. The real interesting question for this project has not been "What would happen to the world if I lived more simply?" Instead, I've been thinking, "What would happen to the world if everyone lived more simply?"
If we think back to the Story of Stuff, we remember the impacts of extraction, production, transportation, and disposal of the things we buy. We recognize the huge totals of embodied energy associated with things we casually purchase but never fully utilize. What if the world's demand for stuff declined significantly so that fewer resources were extracted, fewer power plants needed, fewer trucks were on the road, fewer Walmarts were hogging up land, and fewer things were being landfilled??
All in all, the potential change to the ecological footprint of our nation remains pretty unclear, but I have hope that a change for the better is in our immediate future. My generation is a whole different breed, and it will be up to us to find balance in our consumption of resources and our achievement of happiness. The seeds of sustainable change have been planted, and I fully expect them to grow as more and more people start living "less but better" lives!
If anyone else wants to get on track to "less but better" I'd encourage you to examine your own purchasing habits, not just adopt the rules that I've set for myself. We all own different things that make us particularly happy and other things that are just taking up space. I feel like I've learned a lot about myself through this project, and here are the rules I'll be trying to follow as I continue to pursue "less but better":
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