Grandmother’s china, disco-era pantsuits, Dad’s Barcalounger, Beanie Babies of every stripe — these seemingly innocuous memory-makers have become an American menace.
Landfills are teeming with sofas and toasters, moving vans are transporting heavier household loads than ever, new homeowners are clamoring for three-car garages to stockpile possessions, and self-storage facilities are as much a part of the modern landscape as churches, town halls and Wal-Marts.
In short, we’re suffocating in stuff.
Downsizing may be a ’90s buzzword, but a flourishing economy, a passion for purchasing, and a pack rat mentality has Americans stockpiling more stuff than ever. And letting go of the stuff that defines them — whether it be a malfunctioning microwave or a high school love letter — is a complex proposition, emotionally eclipsing the getting of stuff.
“We really identify ourselves by what we consume and every time we throw something away, we feel like we’re tossing a little bit of our identity,” said Robert Thompson, a Syracuse University pop culture professor. “And since our identities keep changing — we’re married, we’re divorced, we’re married again with a new family, we’re living a thousand miles from our roots — it’s becoming more important to cling to the stuff that reminds us of who we used to be or who we wanted to be.”
Indeed, changing lifestyles add to the stuff pile more than any other factor, say self-storage analysts and professional movers.
The combination of two households when a couple gets married invariably leads to a bed, a living room set, or a kitchen table being left in the dark of a storage shed, attic or basement. With the divorce rate soaring, they may need it later.
In fact, divorces that lead to the division of stuff are also clogging our homes.
Consider this evolution: The newly single stuff meets the new love interest’s stuff, which brings together stepkids’ stuff, and eventually breeds new baby stuff.
Roommates come and go and live-in lovers flow in and out of our lives, leaving behind everything from futons to fish tanks. Families who are far-flung want to hold onto things that bring good feelings and memories about loved ones.
Kids go off to college and leave their stuff behind, or parents who sell the homestead (or die) and distribute their heirlooms, leaving much of their stuff with their children, who invariably have their own surplus of stuff.
So much stuff of their own that the American Moving and Storage Association has noted a 40 percent increase in the weight of belongings families move with them, on average, every seven years. In 1977 Americans toted approximately 5,645 pounds of stuff per family. In 1995, that figure rose to 7,262 pounds.
“We’re not having more kids, so that’s not a factor,” said George Bennett, spokesman for American Moving and Storage. “So, it seems we’re replacing kids with stuff — stereos, sofas, television sets, computers.”
At some point, people do purge and their stuff winds up in a variety of places — mostly, in other people’s attics and basements. Yard sales are an increasingly popular repository, appearing year-round in a neighborhood near you. The Salvation Army thrift store in Saugus, Mass. reports that seven years ago its trucks made 70 home pickups per day in its region. Today, 150 daily pickups are made.
Ulitimately, though, the last stop for those orange Naugahyde bar stools is the trash. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, each American in 1995 generated 4.5 pounds of household waste per day — rugs, sofas, small and large appliances — up from 2.6 pounds in 1960.
But the people who hold onto broken toaster ovens and wouldn’t think of parting with that mountain of rent receipts are not who you might think.
While there are a fair amount of Depression-era folks still preserving every bit of aluminum foil or squirreling away every margarine tub, baby boomers are keeping pace with their comic books collections, sports paraphernalia, graduate school theses, and their babies’ first bibs. Collections are a huge part of the stuff phenomenon: Barbie dolls vie for corners of our closets with baseball cards and stuffed animals.
Many boomers and even Generation Xers, like Sarah Beth Solomont, 31, who had to hire a professional organizer to help her sort the good stuff from the bad throughout her cluttered home, feel that even in this disposable society, most people still have to work hard to acquire things and tossing them to the curb is no guilt-free task.
“Everything the kids did seemed precious to me and I just couldn’t let it go, plus there are my Seventeen Magazines from the 1970s, my doodles from my high school composition books, and furniture we may need someday,” she said as organizer Doreen Doyle began sorting through cartons in the cramped Solomont attic. “God forbid you throw it out then regret.”
Incidentally, Doyle, of Boston, is one of 850 members of the National Association of Organizers. A decade ago, there were 87 members. “Stuff is the heart of this business,” she said.
Homebuilding is always called upon to meet consumers’ growing need for storage. Builders and designers are crafting more closet, basement and attic space and, by buyer demand, making three-car garages a more affordable and attainable option.
But the three bays aren’t necessarily holding cars, according to William Gilligan, vice president for Toll Brothers, the largest homebuilder in Greater Boston. Mostly, it’s “stuff people don’t know what to do with” hiding behind those doors. And, because people would rather hide their stuff than expose it with an open garage door, Toll Brothers now designs a three-bay garage with only two doors.
“People told us they were embarrassed to have their neighbors look at their piles of stuff,” said Gilligan. “So, we figured out a way for them not to expose it.”
But many people have so much stuff, they can’t contain it within the walls of their home.So they take the overflow to self-storage facilities, whichare, by far, the biggest benefactors of this “I might need that someday” mentality. It has become a $5.4 billion industry in just 30 years, according to the Self-Storage Almanac.
Public Storage Properties in Glendale, Calif., is the largest company of its kind in the country, with 65 million square feet of storage space in 1,200 facilities throughout the United States. There are an estimated 1 billion square feet of self-storage nationwide, according to the Almanac.
A gold mine built on empty space, the industry began in California, Arizona and Texas, where basements and garages are scarce. The Northeast, where homes were typically built with ample attic, basement and garage space, was the last place the industry expected to infiltrate.
