Our storage spaces (closets, basements, attics and cupboards) are so overfilled with possessions that our things have spilled out into the living areas of our homes. Our table-tops are covered with magazines, our desks are cluttered with papers, our shelves are stuffed with books, and our mantles & walls are littered with memorabilia. Indeed, 75% of the families in the afore-mentioned study had garages that were so filled with “old stuff” that they couldn’t park their cars therein.

For many of us, George Carlin was right when he said that “a house is nothing but a pile of stuff with a cover on it.”

Most of are being buried alive by our possessions, and many of us don’t even know it.

HOW TO KNOW IF YOU ARE HOARDING

Like any other addiction, there is no specific threshold where one becomes “a hoarder”. Just as every person has a highly personal way of living, everyone also has a unique set of circumstances that govern what they truly need to “live well”. And yet despite these vast differences, there are some general standards that all of us can use to tell whether or not we have accumulated an amount of possessions that is harming our health and/or limiting our true Happiness.

*Do you own more than one of any type of household appliance (refrigerators, TVs, radios, etc)?

*Are your bookshelves filled? (Have you read every book you own? And of the books that you own that you have read, do you intend to read them all again?)

*Have you worn each item of clothing in your possession at least once in the last month?

*Do you buy food for the month or for the week? For the week or for the day? Is your refrigerator full? Do you eat at least a portion of everything in it at least once a week?

These are questions that can help to open your eyes to where you have accumulated too many things in your life. Of course, your own level of “hoarding” really boils down to how far above “need level” you are living. The more things that you own that you don’t actually need to live well, the more your health will decline and the more your Happiness will suffer.

As a Peace Pilgrim, I know a little bit about living close to “need level”, and yet even I am not immune to the addiction of accumulating. Though I have no home and own very few possessions, I too own more than a few items that I do not regularly use – things that are proving to be a detriment to my effectiveness and a weight around my Soul.

And so why do we do this to ourselves? Let’s take a look …

WHY WE COLLECT “STUFF”

*CULTURAL INDOCTRINATION … First and foremost, we here in the west (and anyone else in an industrialized economy) live in a culture that encourages us to consume lots of goods and own lots of things. Our parents taught us to be “successful”, our friends encouraged us to “get ahead”, our literature & our films often inspire us to “become rich”, and our schools taught us to “earn a living” – all so that we can someday “live the good life”.

In addition to these deep-seated indoctrinations, advertising bombards us every day with beautiful images and soothing tones designed to get us to buy our way to those same goals. Even our gurus and “spiritual leaders” are now telling many of us that we can “manifest our own wealth”, or that it is good for us to “access the innate abundance of the Universe”.

In essence, we are taught at a very early age – and are persuaded throughout the rest of our lives – that we can buy & own our way to Happiness.

*ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY .. The way our society has evolved has also led to our over-owning. With the passage of time, the learning of traditional skills has been replaced by learning how to “get online”. Basically, we don’t know how to fix anything anymore. On top of that, our consumption-based economy tends to produce items that are designed to break after only a modest amount of use, so that we might buy more of them. And because these goods are produced so “efficiently”, it is also often cheaper to buy a new item than repair an older one. The result of this dynamic is the steady accumulation of things in our homes.

*GUILT … And yet it isn’t only our culture that inspires our hoarding. Guilt is another major contributor to our massive materialism. May of us work long hours and therefore have relatively little time to spend with our loved ones. A natural consequence of this lack is the buying of presents to somehow make up for the little amount of Quality Time that we invest in each other. The United States has only 3.1% of the world’s children, and yet over 40% of the world’s toys … quite the ominous statistic, really.

In addition, that same guilt often has us holding onto gifts that we don’t even use and that we don’t even like – as though there is some unwritten code than requires us to keep a gift forever to somehow “prove our Love” for the gift-giver.

*FEAR … Fear is another powerful motivator for our over-accumulating. Americans are especially susceptible to “doomsday” propaganda and “imminent crisis” angst. As a culture, we are fascinated by “worst-case scenarios” and are almost obsessed with being ready to face them “just in case”. Of course, these dangers are almost always illusory, and we end up wasting our time and our energy and our money and even a part of our sanity on accumulating things to prepare for them.

*HOARDING IS ADDICTIVE … We are biologically programmed to believe that surrounding ourselves with lots things somehow guarantees us a greater security; a greater protection from danger in general, and once we start doing so, our bodies also become physiologically addicted to the hormonal “high” that we experience every tom ewe buy something new – a “high” that is as fleeting as it is hollow – a “high” we get whether the thing we buy is important to us or not.

THE CONSEQUENCES of HOARDING

Hoarding is not only a matter of “wasted space” or “wasting money”. Hoarding is an insidious addiction – one that actually leads to the wasting away of one’s Life!

*WORRY … There are many ways that having too much is hazardous to your health. The more you own, the more time and mental energy you spend keeping track of those things, and the more you subconsciously (and sometimes consciously) worry about breaking them or misplacing them or running out of them or having them stolen.

“Every new possession loads us with a new weariness.” ~ John Ruskin

*STRESS … Whether you are conscious of it or not, clutter causes stress – and stress is debilitating to your physical health and your emotional stability. Also, the more stuff you have, the more stuff feel you need to maintain that lifestyle, and the more stuff feel you need to maintain your lifestyle, the harder and longer you feel you need to work to pay for it. In essence – even more stress.

“Any possession you cannot relinquish when it has outlived its usefulness possesses you.” ~ Peace Pilgrim

*TIME … You have to work several hours a week just to pay the rent on the space you use to store the excess stuff that you don’t really use. In addition, every item you own requires time for cleaning & maintenance. Individually, these chunks of time are very small – a few minutes dusting here, a few minutes of reorganizing there. However, when you put all of those chunks of all of those excess items together, you will see weeks of time wasted every year on maintaining possessions that are essentially useless.

In conclusion, please remember that YOU ARE FREE to walk away from the prison that is consumerism and the hoarding that it demands of you.

It is possible to choose another way …

It is possible to HAVE so much more by choosing to “have” so much less.