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We Are All Accumulating Mountains of Things
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- jhbadger 8y agoOn one hand the Internet allows a (perhaps too) easy way to obtain physical goods, as the article mentions, but on the other hand it allows a way to avoid many physical goods that we had to purchase before. We can read books and magazines digitally and watch movies and listen to music without having physical media.
- MiddleEndian 8y agoThe most offensive stuff I accumulate is paper received in the mail. Banks, insurance companies, and other self-important financial institutions will send junk that may contain relevant personal information, and as a consequence, I (and many others) have cabinets full of this uninteresting paperwork. At least if I order something I've made the decision to have it in my home. If I were to recreate a postal service in a new nation, I would make it request-only.
- goalieca 8y agoShredding works great st disposal. You can even take a truckload to a professional service
- paulie_a 8y agoI personally want to pull a Seinfeld Kramer moment and opt out of mail entirely. I only check it once a week, then everything goes directly into the garbage. What a waste.
- ryandrake 8y agoI have you beat: my mail goes directly to the trash. I keep a trash can under the mail slot in my garage and just let everything fall into it. Once a week, or when I have time or am curious, I pick through it and pull out anything that might be important.
- amelius 8y agoThere exist services which receive, scan, store and shred your paper mail.
- gambiting 8y agoIt might be different where you live, but over here(UK) bank statements/utility bills with your address on them are used as proof of address, so you really want those to be arriving at your own address, otherwise you can be completely screwed.
- pizza234 8y agoOne scan still scan and shred them by himself. I've never had any complaints after providing a printout from a scan, rather than the original.
- gambiting 8y agoYes of course, but does it mean you have to forward all the letters to the company yourself? Because if yes, then it just sounds like extra work again.
- sean-duffy 8y agoUsually photocopies/print outs aren't admissible as proof of address. At least that has been my experience with credit cards and opening investment accounts.
- amelius 8y agoOk, but has that been tested in a court? Because that's the only thing that matters, ultimately.
- pjc50 8y agoHome Office immigration and some other processes can insist on "originals", even when no originals exist because they were sent electronically.
- maxxEnt 8y agoIt should read: "100 million suckers have signed on to pay $119 a year for “free” two-day shipping instead of free 4-5 day shipping"
- trentmb 8y agoIt should read "free" "two-day" shipping. At some point, I was waiting a week for my Prime packages to arrive. So I cancelled my subscription. Now I wait a week for my packages to arrive.
- ntsplnkv2 8y agoAmazon Prime has deteriorated similarly for me as well. At first, 2 days, every time. It was great and extremely reliable. Now? I'm lucky to get an estimated 2 day delivery. It's almost always 3 days. Why? They deliver it to the post office now, about a mile away. Half the time it gets there too late for the USPS truck to deliver it on that day. It is so frustrating. Couple that with price increases, Twitch prime adding ads, counterfeit products, confusing product pages, fake reviews...Amazon is worse than ever.
- calgoo 8y agoFor me it has been the opposite: I have next day or same day delivery here now. A lot of time when amazon says 2 days, i get the package the next day. It might have to do with living in Barcelona and amazon having their own delivery people here. They even have a summer offer where you can order cold beer and have it delivered to you in less then 2 hours.
- mdrzn 8y agoSame experience here in a relatively small city in Italy, most "2 days shipping" arrive the next day, and Prime is just 3€ a month (so wayyyy cheaper than in the USA). It's a hard to beat service.
- sean-duffy 8y ago
- ataturk 8y agoA couple years ago I had an idea about writing a book "On Stuff" because I was, and still am, having a terrible managing the stuff that comes and goes from my house. I have been doing an annual "bagster" for several years running now. Getting rid of large items like old furniture is the hardest. We sometimes place items along the street with a "free" sign and those usually get taken away relatively fast. A train table, a coffee table, bikes... I hate garage sales with a passion. I don't want to run one, I would rather just throw things out. My father-in-law could not throw anything away. He would bring stuff to our house to give to us and my wife and I would later throw the items away ourselves. My father has the same issue but worse and he lives halfway across the continent from us, so I can't help him at all. He's practically a hoarder--goes on Craigslist and buys tools and equipment because in his mind he is still in business and "needs" those things. He has been retired for 15 years, though. I do my best not to accumulate, but with two kids, there is a constant stream of clothing and belongings to deal with. Couple that with a death in the family that had us inherit half a house worth of furniture and goods, and we found ourselves quickly overwhelmed. I am thoroughly disgusted by it all! I hate stuff, I enjoy throwing things away. But I have my own issues with buying tools and items that help me repair our house and refurbish things but that runs completely counter to our throw-away society. I recently broke the glass on an Ipad 2 Air. The screen works, it's just that Apple cheaped out on the glass. I took it to get it fixed and found out that it's almost as much to get it fixed as it is to just buy a brand new one. Apple, you are not helping! Electronic waste is the worst. I may try to fix it myself, but I need more stuff to try that! The only reason I didn't write the book is because it would just become more stuff I would have to manage in my life.
- torgian 8y agoDamn is it really that bad? I hate buying new shit. I spent a year thinking about replacing my head phones (5 year old Sennheisers) before getting a pair of Noise canceling AKGs. I have a 5 year old MacBook that I want to replace but don’t because it’s just fine for what I need. Shit I spend most of my money on food.
- criddell 8y agoHave you always been like that? When I was young, there was always more stuff that I wanted. Now as I approach 50, what I really want is more time to use the stuff that I bought.
- plett 8y agoI'm in the same boat as you. I bought new earpads last week for my 15 year old pair of Sennheiser HD477 rather than buying a new set of headphones, and my primary laptop is an X230 from 2012.
- unwind 8y agoThis boggled my mind: The average American bought 7.4 pairs of shoes last year, up from 6.6 pairs in 2000. I probably should buy shoes more often, that's easily 10 times more often than I do it. Perhaps that was the "wrong" conclusion from this article, though, oops.
- sevensor 8y agoI would really like to buy fewer pairs of shoes. As I've been walking to work lately, I've worn out about two pairs a year. Seems unreasonable. I can only conclude that modern shoes were not designed to be walked in.
- loco5niner 8y agoSome are designed to absorb the damage that your body would normally be absorbing. Others, are designed to be cheap for manufacturers. Either way...
- LandR 8y agoSame here. I've bough two pairs of shoes this year. A pair of boots because my old boots finally fell apart and a pair of trainers / sneakers because I was going on holiday. In general I try to minimise buying clothes. I hate the entire process.
- CogitoCogito 8y agoI had your initial reaction as well since I personally use the same shoes continuously as long as possible (current every day pair is probably 14 months old and not slowing down), but then I realized that I have in fact gone through running shoes at a pace of 2-3 a year and I did also buy dress shoes this year (though I guess those will last many years to come). Anyway it's a bit of blathering, but I generally consider myself as someone that does not buy very much stuff at all, but I still somehow managed 4-5 pairs in the last 12 months. Maybe I'm not as pure as I assume... edit: Never mind upon reading the article more closely it's clear it isn't describing someone like me. I still take a long time to decide to buy things and even then I usually decide against it. Regardless of my shoe count this year, I definitely don't just buy random crap non-nonchalantly.
- vfc1 8y agoThe internet has a solution for everything. The same way there is 1-click online shopping to fill your house full of junk and toys our kids will never even use, there are also online services for companies that will come at your place and collect all the junk (you need to pay for that too). They will empty your full basement if you want!
- surya_ 8y agoHas Jeff Bezos been informed? If he doesn't own that company yet he must be loosing his edge. The Jeff Bezos of Junk really needs to be Jeff Bezos.
- pjc50 8y agoThe catch is: I would greatly prefer if my stuff was reused rather than simply landfilled, ideally I'd like a nonzero amount of money for it, and some of it would be of personal and emotional value if I could find it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoIf there is an Amazon for "take my junk and sell it for me, keeping a reasonable percentage" I'd really like to know about it. Craigslist is such a pain.
- ryandrake 8y agoUnfortunately it’s the opposite. You generally have to pay people to take your junk. Raise your hand if you have that drawer (or closet) full of old RAM, hard drives and video cards that you’re going to one day sell on Craigslist for $5 each? Spoiler: you won’t. Nobody will buy any of that. You might as well just recycle or trash it. I once took a picture of my computer parts/cables closet and put the entire contents for sale on Craigslist for $10. I got zero replies.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoI dunno, I've sold a lot of things on craigslist I assumed would never sell, or that I'd have to at least lower the price substantially. It's mostly a matter of leaving it out there long enough that the kind of person looking for that thing can find it.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago"as consumers demand cheaper clothing, electronics, and other goods, manufacturers are spending less to make them, which sometimes means they fall apart more quickly" Oh if only it were that simple. I find that even the premium and more expensive makes are being made just as cheaply meaning they don't last as long either. Or when a simple, and formerly replaceable, part fails it can't be replaced for reasonable cost. Even the length of time spares are made available has shrunk dramatically, if available at all. No doubt as now manufacturers insist on constantly changing models for no reason other than visuals.
- gaius 8y agoI find that even the premium and more expensive makes are being made just as cheaply I was looking for some new headphones recently, but reviews of even premium makes were pointing out quality flaws, flimsy manufacturing and so on and I guess now pretty much every pair of headphones in the world comes out of the same factory in Shenzhen and just gets a different brand sticker on it. So I bought a cheap pair by TaoTronics who I’d never heard of before and they’re great! Why would anyone pay 10x as much for basically the same thing?
- hamilyon2 8y agoThis is literally one of very few ways capitalism can continue expanding. Our per-capita production have long passed absolute minimum of things needed. Now it is about convinience, but marginal gains are less and less. For manufacturing to continue to increase, things have to rot after they had been paid for.
- squozzer 8y agoWe should keep in mind that under the current system, goods are made before they are sold. Meaning that not buying so much now might have future benefits later, but at the price of throwing away unbought stuff. And just-in-time manufacturing (e.g. 3D printers) looks awfully slow.