Thinking About: Stuff

Sometimes I feel that I’m drowning in stuff. I have hundreds of CDs and DVDs and, of course, thousands of books. I have computers and a big screen TV and lots of other gadgets picked up along the way but I am at least glad that I don’t feel driven to accumulate more stuff just for the sake of it. I am not the kind of person who needs the latest thing or the best of a particular item. I have never understood the appeal of designer brands or the desire to own an expensive item – like a watch – where a cheaper version will do as well. I have never understood the idea of fashion where perfectly good clothes are replaced for others of a different colour or cut.

Maybe the origin of this lack of consumer angst is the fact that I grew up in relatively poor circumstance where much of the designer lifestyle was simply beyond our reach. Maybe I was simply too lazy to work my butt off getting the money together to buy something that I’d have to discard months later when a different fashion swept through the neighbourhood. Maybe it was simply that mother just didn’t raise no fools. Of course when I got my first job back in the 80’s I found that I had a lot more disposable income than ever before – despite being fairly low paid and working in London. Naturally I disposed of it almost as soon as it hit my bank account. But after buying things I’d always wanted – like a leather jacket I hardly wear and a denim jacket I wore to death – I fairly quickly ran out of things to buy. Strangely though I continued buying, feeling almost compelled to spend money on things I sometimes couldn’t remember buying. It was all rather weird. Pretty soon I got into the habit of asking myself why I wanted the shiny new object in front of me, where was I going to put it, when was I going to wear it. Inevitably my accumulation of useless stuff decreased and the size of my bank balance increased.

Of course I still buy things, some of which I regret later, but on the whole I can walk past the stacks of the latest ‘must-have’ item and find the majority of advertising amusing at best or deeply irritating at worst. Most advertising is designed to make you feel inadequate unless you’re in possession of ‘X’ – only to say in a year or so that ‘X’ is actually inferior to ‘X plus’ and that hanging onto ‘X’ just makes you look a sad failure. Well, I stopped listening to that bullshit years ago! Fashion and me only intersect when something retro happens and I’m still wearing the same footwear or some-such I was wearing ten years ago. For a vanishing brief period I am fashionable – until the next wave sweeps through and I’m just me again.

Whilst not exactly part of the make-do and mean generation (having never darned a sock in my life) I have had countless pairs of shoes re-souled and re-healed in my time and my mother spent countless hours on her sewing machine patching my jeans throughout my teenage years – I actually still can’t bring myself to throw away a pair of jeans just because they’re ripped somewhere (and I’m fashionable yet again!). I use things – be they shoes, kettles or computers – until they become unusable for one reason or another. I’m still wearing T-shirts I bought ten years ago and I used a kettle today that I bought for my new house over fourteen years ago. When I used to wear shirts and ties to work I even, for a short while, wore I shirt I’d worn in school – obviously before the middle-age spread hit.

So maybe I’m not in such bad shape as I thought I was. I have disposable income but little I want to dispose it on. Maybe after almost 50 years of accumulation I have simply run out of stuff that I want or the space to store it all. It explains the difficulty I have in buying myself birthday and Christmas presents (yes, I do that). I do have an extensive Amazon Wish List – just under 300 items – but it’s a list made up of nice-to-haves rather than needs or even wants. I’m just not a very good consumer I guess. Although I can think of much better things to be – like a thinking human being.