I have done no research, just mild casual observations. (Who wants to listen to experts anyway?) Even I, as careful and conscious as I am to avoid hoarding in all its forms, have fallen victim. And so have you. I am willing to bet that the average American household has at least enough food in it to feed four people for months. Yes, months, at any given point in time. This may / or may not be excluding milk and some fresh fruit or vegetables.
Let’s start with the easiest, the food that should be eaten first. I say easiest since it is typically one of our house’s smallest food storage places, the Refrigerator. It is a defined space with only so much room. But speaking from experience, it is amazing how much stuff can be crammed in it. More amazing is how much can get lost, forgotten, and wasted in such a confined space. (There is a source for that funky smell.) Yet we have all opened the fridge, bulging with edible stuff, caught whatever was trying to escape, declared there was nothing to eat, and ordered takeout.
So, what’s in a typical fridge? Eggs, bread, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, cheese, and some type of meat. There is an assortment of beverages, obligatory takeout, and doggy bag containers. These don’t consider the leftover pizza or the lunch from last week that still hasn’t been eaten. Something is plastic rapped. A tinfoil ball holds something, but you can’t remember what. All the ingredients for that special meal and the good-intentioned salad wilting in the bottom drawer are still there.
You can eat at least a week or two just from what is currently in the refrigerator.
How many boxes of cereal do you need? You probably have at least three, maybe four. How many servings are in a box of cereal, 15? Even if you double your portion sizes that’s still at least eight meals. You have just fed everyone breakfast, dinner, or lunch for two days in one box. And you have three more to go.
Every household has at least two boxes of pasta and jars of sauce. But they are not the ones we want so a special trip to the store to get more is necessary. Any house with kids has a minimum of two boxes of macaroni and cheese. They come in 10 packs so there are probably at least five left at any given time. Don’t deny it. We all know you get them at the 10 for $10 sale. No one buys just one box. That’s dinner for a week, leftovers can be lunch. The same is true for the packets of tuna, Rice-A-Roni, soup cans, pudding cups, and Jell-O, and the list is endless. How are you going to eat it before it all goes bad? Never mind, the Twinkies will be fine.
But at least food is consumable. What about everything else? How many home delivery (amazon) boxes never quite seem to make it to the recycle? What about the box from the thing we forgot we have and can’t find anyway? Manuals, junk mail, and that fix-it project you never quite get to.
If you had to move today and could only take what fits in your car, what would you take with you? Keep that stuff for sure. If there was a possibility of adding a very small trailer to the back of your car, what do you take then? Maybe the stuff in the trailer is required. Maybe not. The stuff you didn’t take with you in this got to go now hypothetical, is it really needed? How much of it is in our houses just because it got put there? What is really useful to us and what are we storing for no reason?
After spending over a week house-sitting, traveling between three houses. Maintaining animals, planks, and the mail; I am going to be doing some major downsizing. Most of my stuff was fun when I got it but not now. Now it collects dust.
There is a minimalist contest where you pick a month to get rid of stuff. Day 1 is one thing, day 2 is two things, and so on. By the end of the 30 days, you have purged your environment of 465 things. That is 465 things not stored, dusted, forgotten about, or in your space. That is 465 things no longer adding stress to your life. I have done this many times before but have been slacking lately. I am going all in for the month of June. Less stuff, less work, less stress.
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