Stuff - Paul Graham (paulgraham.com)

Moving across the atlantic, or to some other suitably distant locale is a great way of convincing yourself that you don't really need that much crap. The problem gets to be when you move back and forth too much and end up getting paranoid about buying anything at all that you know you're going to throw out. We're contemplating going back to the states again at this point...sigh.

Books... all I can say is "right on!". I'm glad my wife understood when I paid a bunch of money to have mine shipped over here.

In terms of food, after my latest trip back to the US, I think people there are just starting to wake up to the fact that more/bigger is not necessarily better, and it will take them a while to really catch on, and start really aiming for quality. I actually think my best business idea concerns food, but it will have to wait till we go to the states to try and implement it.

A great technique for de-stuffing and making $: craigslist.

Best productivity boost I've made: Selling TV on craigslist - it sold in 2 hours. (The extra time has been great for working on the startup)

Why save books, besides the memories? Convenience of being able to look things up? I like books, but my wifes parents are book sellers. They have hundreds of thousands of rare books for sale.

She doesn't like to save anything but the most essential books.

The mental load of throwing something away that _might_ have value is pretty high. It might be higher than the integrated attention paid to it in your basement -- unless you move often.

1. Mark a portion of your basement or apartment for some of your "stuff"

2. After a year or two if you have not had to use something at all from this pile get rid of it - ebay, craigslist, garage sale or donate.

3. You will feel good about less clutter.

4. Repeat till you're left with only stuff you really need.

The only place this hasn't worked for me is electronics "stuff".

It's much easier to never get in the habit of buying things in the first place. I remember two particular childhood events that dramatically shaped my consumption habits:

In the first, I was 4 years old and in the toy section of Spag's (a discount warehouse near Worcester), and really wanted a new Transformers toy. My mom said "Oh honey, we can't afford it. We can come back next month and get it." And then ran over to take care of my sister, who was throwing a tantrum over not being able to have a My Little Pony doll. I realized I could be the "good child" by never asking for stuff. From then on, my parents and I had a tacit agreement: they would buy me anything I wanted, and in return I wouldn't want much. Lesson learned: sibling rivalry can be a powerful motivator.

For the second - my parents refused to let us watch any TV other than PBS until they'd sat us down and told us about advertisements. And when they did, the conversation was basically: "The commercials are just trying to sell you something. They want to control your behavior, so that you'll go out and buy what they want." I was 5 years old at the time and couldn't bear the idea of anyone controlling my behavior. After all, it was bad enough when my parents told me what to do. The idea that some nefarious marketing guy would reach through the TV and make me spend money was just abhorrent. Lesson learned: make marketers seem like parents, but with only the evil "You have to do this!" parts and not the comforting take-care-of-you parts.

The end result of all this? I'm 26 years old and still using my high school allowance for spending money. Essentially every penny I've ever earned has gone into the bank and stayed there.

Worse, these sellers of stuff have realized that they can't sell you durable goods! God Forbid! Durable goods last forever! Instead, they've convinced americans that there is value in disposable stuff! Paper napkins and plates, disposable diapers, disposable tupperware, etc etc. Now they've turned those one time purchases into subscription plans.

More stuff in your house. More stuff in landfills.

Why would poor people have more stuff Paul? I see rich people living in McMansions have a lot more stuff than poor people and I am pretty sure Bill G has more stuff than me :).

I wrote a personal wiki type program that hooks up to a barcode scanner and lets me keep track of the books I have read. I just scan the book, it populates an entry, and then I have places I can store quotes and thoughts about the book. (I wrote this before Delicious Library and other such programs were widely available)

I've found keeping track of what I read has made me a more careful reader and alleviates the need for keeping the physical book around. However, I still have a number of old books that I wouldn't bear to part with.

If those toys are put into storage in the basement and just a select few toys are chosen to leave out, they show a lot more interest in those toys.

We have also decided to hold an annual yard sale with other families on our street to get rid of as much stuff as possible every year.

Vance Packard's 'The Hidden Persuaders' was one of the earliest books to deal with this topic in depth. It's scary how they understand us better than ourselves. Book URL:http://www.amazon.com/Hidden-Persuaders-Vance-Packard/dp/067...

Rich people have whole rooms or houses full of stuff that hardly ever gets used, but since it's indexed appropriately (eg "Summer Home" or "Ballroom" or "Gallery") and maintained that way by hired help, it doesn't bother anyone.

In some ways, having money actually makes it easier to not accumulate stuff, because you don't feel as pressured by "good deals".

Am I the only one who thought this was going to be about someone's taxidermy startup?

In all seriousness though, I think the best reason to keep relatively unused things around is if they are objects of sociability. That is, things that bring people together such as alcohol, homemade bread, board games, etc. At one point I was even smart enough to buy a tea set because I thought it would help me meet girls. (Of course I wasn't smart enough to see that my gf would be Asian, but hey, who's complaining.) By definition objects of sociability are used less often because you need at least two people, but they seem to be worth keeping around.

It's weird because we seem to be entering this phase in history where social status is signaled more by what you don't own than by what you do. For example, clothing with logos is generally considered tacky and lower class. At this point probably only another world war or a major recession could change this.

The other point is why people accumulate stuff (crap). Shopping addictions aside, people get more stuff to keep score. Stuff is a scoring mechanism, especially for folks with low self-esteem. It would be useful to collect data to see if there is a correlation or causation between education / achievement levels and accumulation of stuff. I would posit that high achievers and PhDs have less stuff than the norm.

pause

Deep, man.

I like to buy verbs, not nouns. While I was working in the corporate world I lived very simply and saved a lot. I spent all my money on travel. Later I dumped it all into a startup. People talked about the riskiness of startups but I just thought of it as paying to do something cool.

Wonderful sentence. This is how I feel too.

However, I think its some kind of special mental handicap of nerds.

There are people, who are living perfectly energetic and well in a huge pile of crap.

Too me it looks like analytical people are scared by complexity of stuff, while intuitive people like it.

If you have to ship a lot of books---are you really going to need your Sipser book anytime soon?---you can do it media mail for next to nothing.

This is something I've wanted to do for years and I can't tell you how relieving it is to finally do it. I'd like to get down the level of the monk with just a rice bowl, or a hobo with a sack tied to a stick, but really I can't give up things like nail clippers and deodorant and razorblades, and little things like that still manage to take up space. (How much? About another laptop-case sized container.) Of course, it helps to have saved up some money first so you know you could reacquire things if you turn out to need them later. Luckily the process of saving for my startup has given me enough to do that. When I was a student I could've never tossed out my hairdryer...that's another thirty bucks. What if I grow my hair out again? With a little money in your pocket you can let the drugstore keep all of these things for you. Durable goods become disposable. America is totally geared for this. Every time I moved I would go to Wal-Mart and buy a whole new collection of silverware.

One of the rules I used to use was to inspect my stuff before moving it out of an old place. If I hadn't used something in the previous year, chances are I wasn't going to use it in the next, and I'd throw it out. I found this to be a good way to reduce clutter. Of course, now I've gotten rid of a lot of things I did use in the previous year, I just found I didn't really need to use them anymore.

On the extreme side I've gotten rid of my bed, though that's perhaps the one thing I miss. Sleeping on the floor is hard. It's kind of invigorating in a way, though it's downright uncomfortable at times. I'm enjoying it now, but when I finally buy my own place I'll definitely be repurchasing a bed.

When you throw out your stuff you just feel better about your day, and when you get rid of things you really don't need, you find it simplifies your routine. When I wake up in the morning I spend less time primping and preening. I grab my laptop case and I head out to my workspace, and then I work without worrying whether I made my bed or if my dresser needs dusting. The experience is a lot like refactoring code. It's extremely liberating.

Funny that Paul should mention kids. When my son was born, I was given a lot of plastic toys that make noise. I've seen them on the shelves at ToysRUs, and they are remarkably cheap.

Thing is, my parents and their friends (who are crossing 60 these days) came of age at a time when a toy was a rare and expensive treat. They were generally made in the US, and required a lot of capital and first world labor. A large room full of toys was a sign of the very well to do. When they were kids, a new toy was a truly wonderful gift, and so they continue to give them.

And yet their houses were relatively cheap relative to their incomes. For 20 and 30-ish people, the great financial challenge is housing, not plastic toys. So stuff is very cheap, but a place to put that stuff is prohibitively expensive.

I have a feeling my 2 year old would really enjoy a toy workbench. The item itself is awfully cheap, and I could probably get one for $25 on craigslist, but the real estate it's sitting on is worth about $2k.(I live in one of the few remaining unfashionable blocks of San Francisco for the low low price of about $650/sq ft- on nob or russian hill this workbench would probably cover closer to $10k worth of floorspace).

So here's another way to test a purchase. Think about how much floor space the item would cover, and ask yourself if it's worth the are*$/sqft.