The Season Of Stuff

We’re huge fans of Annie Leonard’s campaigning film The Story of Stuff .

This twenty-minute broadside against consumerism is well worth checking out, if you don’t know it.

But, as Christmas draws near, it also gets us thinking about our own mountain of possessions. Our very own story of stuff.

I mean, why buy presents at all? Even with a family cap on how much we spend on each other, we begin to wonder if there’s any merit in this orgy of gift-giving. Or whether, outside its role in giving the economy a kick in the pants, Christmas really has had its day.

With all this in mind, it’s good to mark the end of the year of the 100 Things Challenge.

It was only a little over a year ago that 37 year old entrepreneur, Dave Bruno, from San Diego ditched most of his possessions and embarked on a year of simple living. The proud owner of only one hundred possessions, Bruno recorded his subsequent year in a much-followed blog.

Well, one hundred possessions may sound a tad generous to any of history’s great hermits or anyone’s who headed into the outback with only a rucksack on their back. I doubt that local legend Millican Dalton had more than a couple of dozen possessions lying around his Borrowdale cave. But given that Bruno’s one hundred list included paperwork and all clothing items, his venture still represents a worthwhile experiment.

How would any of us find it cutting down our possessions to one hundred? Well, it all depends on how much stuff you’ve got to begin with. If you’re wondering, let me tell you about a regular guy who’s probably pretty average in this respect and who provides a useful test-case.

Meet Michael Landy. Landy is a British artist who, in 2001, destroyed all his lifelong possessions in a disused store in London’s Oxford Street. Using an assembly line and ten assistants, he oversaw the destruction of every one of his possessions. All that was left at the end of the process was a pile of sealed bags of rubbish.

The number of personal items that he’d gathered until this point in his life? No less than 7227. So if you’re anything like Landy (and most of us probably are), you need to ditch about 98.6% of your possessions if you’re going to match Dave Bruno’s challenge.

Which brings us back to Christmas and how any of us can make informed decisions about buying presents, assuming we don’t want to turn into miserable Scrooges and “Humbug!” the whole event.

For Nicky and I, it comes down to working out what it is we value in things. We like to think about stuff earning its keep because:

a) it’s got a purpose that matches need. In ergonomic terms, that balance of
function and beauty.
b) it fits in with a sustainable ethic. Think organic or recycled materials produced with minimum harm to environment and people.
c) it’s a quality item with promised longevity. Think Granddad’s leather brogues rather than that pair of cheapskate trainers.

Interestingly, Michael Landy’s artwork took on a whole new direction after his exercise in auto-destruction. He subsequently exhibited a series of incredible miniaturist drawings of plants and weeds growing up from cracked pavements. The showy performance artist graduated into the mature draughtsman.

So maybe we can all learn something from the 100 Things Challenge. What about taking it on? Or even the Seventy-Five Things Challenge? Or, if you’re feeling ambitious, the Two Dozen version?

And then there’s all the mental clutter to deal with. Hmm. Anyone come up with a good solution to sorting out that one?