01/10/2019 | JOSHUA BECKER ·
Most of us know we own too much stuff.
We feel the weight and burden of our clutter.
We tire of cleaning and managing and organizing.
Our toy rooms are messy,
our drawers don't close, and
our closets are filled from top to bottom.
The evidence of clutter is all around us.
increasing data is being collected about our homes, our shopping habits, and our spending.
The research is confirming our observation: we own too much stuff.
And it is robbing us of life.
21 surprising statistics about our clutter that help us understand how big of a problem our accumulation has actually become.
1. There are 300,000 items in the average American home
2. The average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years
3. And still, 1 out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage—the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades.
4. While 25% of people with two-car garages don't have room to park cars inside them and 32% only have room for one vehicle.
5. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks.
Currently, there is 7.3 square feet of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation.
Thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self storage roofing
6. British research found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily
7. USA Only 3.1% of the world's children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally
8. The average American woman owns 30 outfits—one for every day of the month. In 1930, that figure was nine
9. The average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually
10. The average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing per year
11. Nearly half of American households don't save any money
12. our homes have more television sets than people.
And those TV sets are turned on for more than a third of the day—eight hours, 14 minutes
13. we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago
14. Currently, the 12 percent of the world's population that lives in North America and Western Europe account for 60 percent of private consumption spending,
while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent
15. Americans donate 1.9% of their income to charitable causes
While 6 billion people worldwide live on less than $13,000/year
16. Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches ($100 billion) than on higher education
17. Shopping malls outnumber high schools.
93% of teenage girls rank shopping as their favorite pastime AFFLUENZA
18. Women will spend more than eight years of their lives shopping
19. Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.
The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime.
Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list
20. Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential goods—in other words, items they do not need
21. The $8 billion home organization industry has more than doubled in size since the early 2000's—growing at a staggering rate of 10% each year
The numbers paint a jarring picture of
excessive consumption and
unnecessary accumulation.
Fortunately, the solution is not difficult.
The invitation to own less is an invitation to freedom.
When you ain't got nothing you got nothing to lose - Janice Joplin
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