Stop the war on clutter!

There’s so much smugness out there about simplifying and paring down. All those self-improvement reality shows that begin with throwing away all your clothes or all your furniture or both. I have a friend who says that for every new possession you need to get rid of five old things.

And it is very satisfying to go through your stuff and get rid of things. It gives me a great sense of accomplishment to fill boxes or bags with stuff I don’t need and get it out of my life. Such moral clarity.


But lately I’ve been thinking it’s a really easy virtue. The hard thing would be to stop consuming, but paring down or ending clutter usually means buying more stuff.

I propose we try to live by a much harsher moral imperative. Keeping everything we consume, including the packaging.




Forever.

My own private landfill

As many of you know, I've been collecting styrofoam from my friends and neighbors for a few months now. I could rhapsodize about the material forever, but right now I want to focus more on the accumulation. It's taking up quite a bit of real estate in my studio. It's pretty amazing that a few posts to a few yahoo lists can generate this much styrofoam.



I've always had a very local and personal response to the problem of consumer waste. Our apartment gets perilously close to being a collier mansion, not because I'm such a hoarder -- I don't really want the stuff, or picture a future for it -- but because I can't bear to add it to a landfill, or worse, send it off floating on a barge forever.

Now I read that (as usual) I've simply been a little ahead of the trend. This week's NY Times reports that as the demand for materials to recycle falls, cities and people are being forced to store their own paper, bags, bottles &c.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08recycle.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink