Being so constantly surrounded by a culture that puts acquiring things in a high priority slot, then being yanked out of it really forces you to think about things and their value. One thing I have realized is that things themselves are not what make us happy, it’s the effects of things. For example, if you get a new razor and it gives you a nice smooth shave, you are not truly happy about the razor, you are happy that you look/feel clean (for a couple more hours at least). If you get a beautiful statue of an elephant from Africa, you are not truly happy about the statue, you are happy about the way that it improves the energy of your home (if it does, that is).

The Harm of More Things

The constant contrast between hardly having any stuff and being bombarded with so much consumerism has made me rethink whether having more things is good or bad, even at base value. I wrote a long piece about this recently, but in short my thoughts are that any things you have beyond things that take care of your basic needs and things that help you to be more productive towards accomplishing your life goals are almost certainly unnecessary. That is, you could not have that stuff and use the extra space/time/money that it would have consumed in order to invest in one of the above goals, and this would go much further towards making you happy.

Having more things can be a burden in more ways than one. If you have more things, it makes you less mobile if you ever need to move, which is inevitable. Things take up space in your home, space that could be used for awesome and productive things, or could just be clean and organized, giving your living space a better energy and putting you more at ease every day. Think of how many homes have attics that are full of junk that is never used. If all that junk was eliminated, the attic spaces could be converted into extra rooms that could be rented out or used for guests. They could be converted into little home gyms, reducing your gym costs and commute times. They could be converted into dedicated relaxing spaces, where you can have quiet time to reflect and relax, getting away from the chaos of normal life.

Having more things also ties up money. For every thing you have, if you do not use it, you could sell that thing and have more money to put towards things that you do use and make you happy, or saving it to become financially independent or for awesome life experiences, travel, and/or learning. And finally, having things that you don’t use or need takes those things away from people who might need and use them more. There are many people who cannot afford clothes, having a closet stuffed full of things you do not wear means the clothes are going to waste where they could be really making a difference in someone’s life.

Quantity & Quality

So let’s imagine that reading this has converted you and you now want to consciously try to live with fewer things. This means that the fewer things you have, you want to really be good quality things (another nice benefit of having less things). I’m not talking about designer handbags and such here, those are simply veblen goods, low value products in comparison to their price in exchange for trying to look more rich or fashionable. I’m talking about things that purely have very high value — a great price to quality ratio. Higher quality things, however, tend to come with a higher upfront price tag, which makes them a little more difficult to acquire. But they almost always they end up paying themselves off over time, as they slowly shave wasted time and extra stress off our lives, and outlast comparable poor quality things.

This also can tell us something about giving though. If you give someone a lower quality thing just because it’s in budget, often times this will do more harm than good. Why is this? Because once someone has a thing, they are more likely to satisfy themselves with that thing than to decide there’s another similar thing of higher quality, buy it, and throw out the original thing. Especially if it’s a gift, they would not want to offend the giver. So by giving people low quality things, you essentially are forcing a thing of lower value on them that they can’t easily give up. This, as a direct opposite of the benefits of good quality things, will slowly do harm by taking away little pieces of time and adding little pieces of stress to the receiver’s life.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

For our family in the past, and for the US in general, despite the well-known moral of the Grinch, Christmas is often centered around things. We spend hours agonizing over what to get people, making sure it arrives in time, painstakingly wrapping it all, and finally taking delight in their reactions. Let’s be honest, the church service is nice, but the process of giving and receiving things and its related feelings are typically what constitute the true meaning of Christmas for us year to year.