How Much Stuff Does It Take to Be Happy?

Recently, my young friend Lori wrote about paring down her possessions so she can move to the east coast and attend a writing program. In her post, she lists five benefits of owning less, including

• saving money,
• gaining appreciation of the stuff you decide to keep,
• traveling and relocating more easily,
• making other people happy by giving them your castoff things, and
• reducing the urge to buy more stuff and thereby overspend.

To Lori's list, I would add this bullet:

• feeling great about "treading more lightly on the earth," counteracting the trend seen in this terrific, and terrifying, video:

Anyway, the subject of stuff is one I've been thinking about for years. My interest began with a study reported in Utne Reader about 15 or so years ago. According to this study by a major US university, the happiest people on earth were living in a tiny town in India, where a person with a stool to sit on was considered rich. In spite of the dearth of physical possessions, the people in this village managed to educate their children from a communal library, maintain good health, and have strong social bonds. 

I was frankly shocked by this article. I haven't been able to find it on the web to share it with you, and it may not still be valid today, but the point is, it got me thinking. Up until then, like most people around me, I'd measured success in monetary terms. For example, one of my goals was to earn enough money to buy a pair of 18K gold hoop earrings. This could only happen after I had a secure place to live with my children, ample food and clothing for the three of us, and paid-up sports and school fees. When I finally had enough extra money to buy those earrings, I judged I'd really "made it."

BUT -- what was next? What would really make me and the kids happier? (We were already happy, I should add.) More stuff to follow the earrings?? That certainly was, and often still is, the goal of many of us in this country. I kept thinking about this. And buying more stuff.

I found it impossible to go against the flow, to take a different direction than the larger society, regardless of any intentions otherwise. As time went on, though, I began feeling weighed down by my increasing possessions. They were supposed to make me happy, but the pleasure was short-lived, and then I had to worry about housing, cleaning around, and moving an ever-increasing amount of stuff.

When the kids left home for college about a decade ago, I started weeding out and paring down my stuff, hoping to lighten this burden. About halfway through that process, Bill and I met, married, and merged households, so I got to weed out even more stuff. Then the kids needed us to store "just a few boxes" for them. During that period, I felt like I'd somehow acquired very bad "garage karma" because every time I got it cleaned out, it would magically fill up again, with no assistance from me.

A few years later, I'm in the final stages of what turned into a gigantic weeding-out effort. Last year, Bill and I moved into the city to be closer to his work and many of the activities we're interested in. Because homes in the city cost nearly twice as much per square foot as the home we left, and we wanted to tread more lightly on the earth, we bought a small house, small enough, in fact, to be considered a "cottage." In spite of my previous efforts, we still possessed twice as much stuff as would fit in our cottage. Now, after another whole year of weeding out, and with some things still to give away, we can walk around the house fairly freely, without tripping over too much stuff in the transit from here to there.

We fit everything into our cottage, almost.

While it's been a big adjustment to live in such as small space, by modern American standards anyway, I'm pleased to report being much, much happier here than when living in a far larger house with lots and lots more stuff.

To sum up, if I had it to do all over again, I'd use the theme of this song as a model for fashioning my life, so gorgeously performed by Ella Fitzgerald:



You might also enjoy:

• World Environment Day  - I never would have heard about this, but for a comment from a reader in Indonesia.
• Buhtan's Gross National Happiness  -  Would you rather have your government promote happiness or gross domestic product?