So much stuff
My wife and I love to go to estate sales.
There's a local company that puts on estate sales, and we're on their mailing list so we are always in the loop for sales they have coming up. There are always huge crowds at these sales, which makes sense because you can find really nice things there for really low prices.
I'm always struck by the sheer quantity of things that are at these sales. It's amazing how much stuff a single family or even just a pair of people can pile up over the years. At the sale we went to today, there were racks upon racks of clothes, many with the tags still on them, never worn. Boxes full of dishes, cutlery, kitchen utensils. Tables stacked high with shoes (there must have been close to 100 pairs of shoes in the house), a cardboard box stuffed with at least 10 different shoe brushes and shoe leather conditioning products. Piles of hats. A whole life spent accumulating thing after thing was laid out for us to pick over, hunting for bargains.
Things are good. I'm glad we have things. But if we as a society are ending up with some houses piled high with things, and others lacking even basic necessities, aren't there better choices we could be making? This conundrum has been bouncing around in my head a lot lately. I've been working on re-building my wardrobe, as most of my clothes don't fit me anymore and I've had to give most of them away. I try to thrift or buy used as much as I can, but there are some things that are just easier to find new. I've found myself fixating on the clothes I want and plotting how to stretch my clothing budget as far as possible in order to get as many pieces as I can. Being at the estate sale was a (grim) reminder - I can't take any of it with me. At the end of my life, no one is going to care what I wore (unless I somehow pivot to becoming a fashion designer, which I do not foresee tbh). No one is going to care if I had nice stuff. People will only care if I made others' lives better or worse. Focusing energy on that is much better than focusing energy on whether or not I'm getting the best deals or nicest clothes.