Living with Less: How Much Stuff Does a Family Need?

Last spring, at the height of weekend garage sale season, my older boy asked me, “Mom, do people all over the world have garage sales?”

How I answered will be revealed at the end of this post. But I thought about our conversation after reading this opinion piece in the Sunday New York Times, about why we all have so much stuff and what we can do about it. It’s by a serial Internet entrepreneur named Graham Hill who realized, when a series of life changes first compelled him to buy and fill up a 3,600-square-foot Seattle house and, then, a 1,900-square-foot downtown Manhattan loft, then drain these homes in order to travel, that he had a troublesome relationship with stuff. What he found was that gathering and then dealing with all the stuff never felt right, whereas once he left behind or got rid of the furniture and gadgets and tools and sundries, he felt lighter, and not just because he could fit his life in a backpack (or, now, into a 420-square-foot studio). He realized that all the stuff he’d owned, far from making him more fulfilled, dragged him down emotionally.

I hate stuff. I mean, I love stuff, but I hate having to deal with it. I suspect as a parent I’m not alone here — toys, outgrown clothes, video games, toys, books, and did I mention toys? There’s a push-pull: I don’t have a very spacious house, so I find myself alternately wishing I had more room, bigger rooms, more capacious closets; and wishing that I could downsize to that just-right point in which the four of us, and the stuff we actually use and need, fit comfortably right where we are.

My mother, a.k.a. the Original Mean Mom, has the same split-screen approach I do (though she’s just that one or two notches better than I am at organizing, or perhaps she’s just more ruthless than I am): She likes stuff, she buys things (clothes, kitchen items, the small antique tables she has a strange affinity for), but she also gets rid of things, and does not live in a large space anymore.

Which brings me to the house in which I grew up. When I compare the four-bed Colonial I spent most of my childhood in to the house in which I’m raising my boys, I remember our old home as far more commodious.

Then I went back and looked at it. This was about a year ago — my older son and I were driving through the town in which I grew up, and I took an impulsive detour to our old street — a leafy cul-de-sac with 11 identical homes, built in 1968. I had not been in the house since the day my folks moved out, in 1996. Again on impulse, I rang the doorbell. The owners — fortunately for me, the same family who’d bought it from my parents — remembered the name and agreed to let me in to look around. (“Just excuse how it looks,” the woman of the house said, “I don’t keep house like your mom did.” Ha. It looked fine. I replied, truthfully, “Don’t worry. No one keeps house like my mom does.”)

Some things surprised me, such as the fact that the wallpaper my dad had put up in the stairwell and upstairs hall was still there, and as outdated as it was the day they moved out. Some amazed me, like how awesome the kitchen looked, having been relatively recently renovated and opened up to the dining room. I felt emotional (naturally), but also baffled. This was my house? I mean, it’s nice and comfy and easy to move around in, sure. But it’s not big, at least not by today’s open-concept, walk-in-closet, great-room, double-vanity standards, anyway. My old room, my sanctuary, felt boxy, the closet shallow (though the shelves my dad and I had built when I was 11 or so were still there, and still covered with the blue and white Contact paper I had picked out). The den was comfy, but — sensing a theme? — small.

How did we live there?

Very well, actually, the same way my family and I live here in our little domicile.

In his Times piece, Hill shares this tidbit:

In a study published last year titled “Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century,” researchers at U.C.L.A. observed 32 middle-class Los Angeles families and found that all of the mothers’ stress hormones spiked during the time they spent dealing with their belongings. Seventy-five percent of the families involved in the study couldn’t park their cars in their garages because they were too jammed with things.

It shouldn’t surprise any of us that square footage of the average American home has gone up steadily over the years. My home, built in 1950 and expanded by a previous owner some time in the 1990s (I think) is about 1,800 square feet. That’s miniscule by today’s new-home standard, with the average in 2011 about 2,480. And that’s with fewer people in each home, for the most part. (Of the 11 original owners on our old street, only one family had two kids. All the rest were three-, four- or five-kid families.) I just watched an episode of House Hunters International last night, in which a nice Tennessee family, a husband and wife and two tween sons, moved to Dusseldorf, Germany for a job transfer. They left a bigger-than-4,000-square-foot home. All that space for four people! And though I don’t know this for sure, I can make a good guess that every closet was full, plus the (three-car) garage and basement. With what? (The heartening news is that they downsized in their new German home, a still-roomy but much more compact city apartment, which I cheered them for choosing.)

I still wouldn’t mind more space. Or maybe more logically laid out space (the part where the former owners expanded in the 80s? Gee, but I wish they’d consulted me on what they did!) But frankly I’d rather just get rid of more of what we have. As I type this, half my unfinished basement laundry room is taken up with bags and boxes and piles of stuff waiting for me to have time to cart it to Goodwill or call up one of the charities I routinely donate to.

A few months ago I took everything out of my bedroom closet, and axed more than half of the clothes in there as no longer needed. I cleaned the space, re-hung and re-organized what was left and you know what? All the air space between the clothes and shoes and bags that were left helped me breathe, almost literally. I looked at it and I felt measurably more relaxed. I was so impressed I took photos:

All the clothes from my closet, on my bed.

Re-organized, with breathing space.

So back to the beginning and the answer I gave my son when he asked about garage-sale rates around the world: I had to think about it for a second, but of course the answer’s obvious. Garage sales are a uniquely Western (if not almost always American) phenomenon. I said to my boy, “Honey, if you and your family lived in a one-room hut or shack, and had just one pot for cooking, you would never feel the need to sell that pot, would you? We only get rid of stuff because we have too much of it.”

Now that I think of it, my pot closet is a daily source of annoyance and some cursing, given how unorganized it can be. I rail against the mish-mash of the cabinet, as though it was the cabinet’s fault. Nope. I just have too many pots.

How about you?