5 steps to taming materialism, from an accidental expert

,

When I was a kid, there was money everywhere. My great grandpa was a lawyer for the Chicago mob in the 1920s, and today, my dad’s generation is still living off that money. Sometimes I wonder if the key to being able to squash materialism is to have a lot of it as a kid. I’m not sure. But let me tell you this: I grew up with a laundress and a housekeeper and unlimited cash from a drawer in the dining room.

When I went to college my parents cut off my money. I think this might have been normal at the time. I remember crying. Really. Crying over the fact that I’d never be able to shop at Lord & Taylor. But it didn’t take long for me to see that people don’t wear Lord & Taylor skirts to class. In fact, I realized that most people don’t wear Lord & Taylor skirts anywhere because some of those skirts could feed a family for a month.

1. Test the meaning of money by doing stuff that’s scary.
One of the first things I did after college was sell three strings of pearls to get myself to Los Angeles. I was really scared when I did it, but in fact, the only time I missed those pearls was when my mom asked where they were.

When I was making a lot of money, I had great work clothes and a BMW (hey, I lived in LA), but that was about it, in terms of splurging. I kept an inexpensive apartment, and people used to tell me I was nuts to live there when I had so much money. They told me I was uncomfortable with success, and I worried they were right, but I stayed there. In hindsight, I realize it felt safe to live somewhere I could afford if my company went bankrupt. Which it did.

2. Put a bunch of stuff in storage to see what it’s like.
When I moved from Los Angeles to New York City my husband and I rented a 500-square-foot apartment. We told ourselves we’d only be there for a year, until we got more settled in the city. So we put all our books in storage, most of our furniture, clothes that were not in season and everything we wouldn’t be using in the next three or four months.

The only way I could put the stuff in storage was to tell myself I could go back and forth every week getting stuff I missed. We ended up staying there six years. We took almost nothing out of storage.

I quote Daniel Gilbert all the time about how we can adapt to anything. Gilbert says that we think some changes will be terrible – like losing a limb – but in fact we are great at adapting to circumstances that don’t change. This is true of putting stuff in storage. You quickly learn to live without it.

3. Understand the concept of aspirational clutter. Get reality and throw stuff out.
When we had a baby, we thought we would move for sure, but 9/11 was too traumatic. It didn’t feel like the right time to move. So we threw stuff out, and we learned a lot about how what you keep in your small apartment is a statement about your values.

So much of what we hold on to is what we wish we were using — objects that commemorate a life we aspire to but do not have. The six books we bought a year ago and haven’t read, for example. We don’t want to admit that we’re not making time to read, so we save them. The treadmill is another object that is loaded because if you throw it out you’re admitting to yourself that you’re never going to use it. Keeping it, even unused, maintains your dream of getting into shape.

In fact, we had to think very hard about every single thing we let into the apartment, and we instituted a rule that if you brought something in, you had to take something out. Maybe other New Yorkers in small spaces had this rule, too, because there is always really good stuff left on doorsteps in New York City.

Then we had another baby. And that was it. With four people living in 500 square feet, I started having recurring dreams about living in a bigger space and I’d wake up to be disappointed that it was only a dream. I decided the small space was driving me crazy, and I started compiling research about where to move.

4. Know this: You could dump everything if you had to.
And then we got bed bugs. We didn’t know that much about them but we captured a bug and checked it on the Internet. When I left the landlord a message to tell him we had bed bugs, our usually completely inaccessible landlord called me ten times in one day. I should have known we were in big trouble.

In fact, our whole building had bed bugs, and maybe the whole city. There is a lot written about bed bugs. There is an epidemic in the United States at all levels of the economic spectrum. (Our bed bug expert said that the worst clients he had were up and down Park Avenue because they felt they had been assaulted by the dirty underclass.)

Bed bugs bite you in your sleep. We had two kids under four years old, and I started staying up all night keeping the bugs off them. Finally the landlord paid for a hotel (about $300 a night in NYC) while we negotiated with him about what to do.

The bugs and their eggs could be in anything in the apartment made of fabric or wood. Here’s how long the bugs can live without food: eighteen months. There is no way we could starve them. We had to poison them. And the only way to do that is to get them to come out of hiding and walk through the poison. The only thing they’ll come out for is human blood.

How would they get human blood? We had to live in the apartment. What do people on Park Avenue do? The staff lives there while the family goes to the summer home or a hotel. What do the not-rich people do? Use themselves as bait. That’s what our neighbors did.

We tried using ourselves as bait for one night, and every bug (by now there were forty or fifty a night) went for the kids. I developed near complete insomnia, always fearing that the kids were getting bitten as soon as I shut my eyes, even in broad daylight when the bugs are asleep.

The bed bug expert said that the most common thing he sees is that people move, but they won’t give up their stuff, so they take the bedbugs with them. We had two kids bitten everywhere. We took no chances and we took with us only things that could be boiled in hot water or thrown in a hot dryer – to ensure no bugs. We took from that apartment less than half of the size of a small U-Haul truck. We left almost everything.

5. Throwing stuff out is not wasteful.
In Madison, we started with just about nothing. Sort of like college kids. You think that throwing everything out is so costly and such a waste of money. But in fact it taught us how little we needed most of the stuff we had, which made us buy much less going forward.

While we have bought a lot since we got here, the years in New York City taught us about living in a small footprint (we still have one of the smallest two bedrooms around) and losing all our stuff to the bed bugs taught us that we didn’t really need much after all.

People often ask me how was I able to switch careers so many times (professional volleyball, corporate marketing, entrepreneurship…) And how have I been able to do so many high risk things (for example take a 70% pay cut and start new as a freelance writer when I had my first baby and was supporting the family.) The answer is that I had very little to lose.

It’s a cliche for a reason. If you have a very low-cost lifestyle and very few physical things that you treasure, you cannot really imagine a rug being pulled out from under you because you don’t own that great a rug anyway.

People think that what’s holding them back from taking risk is some big financial idea of stability and well being, but it’s really fear of losing your comfortable material life, whatever that is. Mine is so spare that I can easily replace it, even if we got bed bugs again.

Which we won’t. Because we had our new house treated before we moved in; even big risk takers draw the line somewhere.

160 replies
« Older Comments
  1. Jonha @Happiness
    Jonha @Happiness says:

    Penelope,

    You are now my daily web Purpose-Driven life. Your thoughts are pretty much spot on. Sometimes we’re want great things but afraid to take risks. You are right about bringing something in and letting something out. Life is just like that, we have to deal with that.

    Jonha

  2. Cherryl
    Cherryl says:

    Please don’t “throw anything out” as in take it to the trash. Donate it or put it in a clean box by the rubbish bin. There are people who, for whatever reason, make a small living out of recycling unwanted items. It’s not a lifestyle that most people choose, but gleaning is a very time-honored way for the poor to get by. Of course it would be better not to have a “poverty mentality”, but not everyone has evolved to that level.

  3. SamJ
    SamJ says:

    I was a pack rat for years. It wasn’t until I had to move cross-country twice in two years that I really reduced my stuff. When faced with paying to ship “stuff” or selling it, I told myself that cash was a lot easier to pack. I had three enormous moving sales. I’ve never regretted the things I sold and I’ve lived a much simpler life ever since (in a space one-third the size of my old home). I always told my daughter that “things” are not so important, but experiences are priceless. It just took me awhile to follow my own advice.

  4. Craig Mollins
    Craig Mollins says:

    I love this article. I remember when I first discovered the joy of letting things go and having less. It was when I sold the first new car I had ever owned. I sold it to pay for a training program that I just knew was what I had to do with my life (which turned out to be true, the beginning of a profession that I have stuck with for fifteen years and counting). But what I discovered in selling that car was how liberating it was to ‘not’ own a car, and also how much more in touch with my city – Boulder Colorado at the time – I became. All of a sudden I was walking everwhere which was wonderful and revealing to me in many ways. I’ve never looked back, and have never owned a car since.

  5. cosmopolite
    cosmopolite says:

    I complete agree with Penelope’s post, except that I have no experience with bedbugs. I do not live by Penelope’s principles, because my wife is more conventional and calls the shots.

    I agree that people living from paycheck to paycheck, well beyond their means, is a major problem.

    Readers out there: if you and your spouse make the maximum possible IRA contributions every year, you will accumulate about 1M over the course of a 40 year working life. You can accumulate that 1M even if Mrs takes 15 years off to have and raise the children. A 401K makes it even easier to reach 1M. With 1M, you can retire any time and spend 3500/month very responsibly. Social Security comes on top of that.

    People have financial problems because they drive cars that are too flash, are too fixated on living in tony neighbourhoods, and simply fill their houses with junk they don’t really need or care about.

  6. Xanthippia
    Xanthippia says:

    This article of yours has “legs,” and not the millipede kind. You wrote it years ago, and it’s still relevant today.

    On Friday morning, I drove two dear friends to a U-Haul rental agency, where they picked up a 17’x8′ truck, and we three then headed across town to their storage facility, which measures 20’Dx8’Wx12’H. Their plan was to empty the stuff from the storage area into the truck, and then drive down the coast to a relative’s house, where they would store the stuff rent-free in the basement and garage. The trip would take two days of driving through high winds and heavy rain (Hurricane Earl’s arrival coincided with their road time).

    We met the two movers my friends hired to load the truck at the storage facility, and went to work. The storage area was not even half full, but felt like more because it was “live,” and stuff was constantly being moved around in it. We finished securing the final items in the truck after slightly more than 45 minutes. Securely packed, all the stuff required about an 8’x4′ space in the truck. I suggested (only half-joking) they pick up a couple of sleeping bags and folding cots, and just sleep in the truck instead of renting a hotel along the way.

    When the movers finished, my friends paid off the rest of the charges for the storage area and the movers. One of them remarked that they’d had a 20’x40′ storage area right after downsizing from their 4,000 sq.ft. house in a toney New England township into a 900 sq.ft. condo in a seaboard metropolitan center. At the end of a year, the charges for the rental increased by 30%, so they decided to downsize again, and reduced the storage footprint to the current 20’x8′ area. At the end of another year, the facility intended to raise the price again, so they decided to terminate the rental agreement. I asked how much the storage area cost–$600 per month. That’s the cost of an apartment. Just for the stuff, with nobody living in it.

    So now, because they’re worried they may one day want to move into a larger house again and they won’t be able to find “perfect” stuff, they’ve shlepped it across two full days and five state lines, where it will stay undisturbed, taking space and gathering dust in a parent’s house. They spent $300 for the truck rental (which at 10 miles to a $3.00 gallon of gas will add another $200 or so to the charge), $100 for the movers’ time, $110 for the night at a hotel mid-trip, $400 for the airfare home, and $50 of taxi fares to/from airports on both ends of the trip. $1,160, or close to that, just to move the stuff.

    Add this to the already spent 24 months of storage at the facility–$14,400–and the number is just stunning. $15,000 spent just to keep boxes and bins of things that they don’t even have a firm plan for using in the future.

    I came home from the storage facility and immediately filled two enormous boxes with books I’m done reading, old clothes I love remembering but never wear, and “spare” plates, cups, utensils, and gadgets that I’ve been thinking I just can’t live without. These boxes are heading tomorrow to a few charities I’ve contacted (women’s and homeless shelters, and a literacy program).

    If I ever have to rent a storage pod, somebody needs to put me in a padded cell, because it’ll be obvious I’ve lost my mind.

  7. Diane
    Diane says:

    I loved this post because it shows a clear attitude that whatever life slings your way, you can handle it. Besides, I know that folks in my own close circles are so tied to their material lifestyle that they can’t see to make sacrifices in order to come out to the other side. I would like to think every one has the courage to cut back, in order to do greater things in the future. That is, if the cutbacks are warranted. And to my mind, just for today, they are! Thanks for the inspiration!

  8. Relatieproblemen
    Relatieproblemen says:

    Penelope, but why exactly did your parents cut off the money? Were they afraid you couldn’t handle the world on your own? I’m sure they made the right decision, but I wonder why so? Thanks for the post.

  9. psp.com
    psp.com says:

    Thanks for Tips for coping when your startup is out of cash. I am trying to start a business, finish college, hoping I am saying all the right things and saying the right things is something I find so hard. I want to be a project manager and I think I was going to have an opputuniy but I did not step to the plate because it was a lot of money at steak what if I fell.

  10. p90x
    p90x says:

    GREAT SHARING. THANKS FOR YOUR EFFORT.
    Perfect stuff as usual..Great post.Really an innovative and interesting idea. Thanks for informative listing.

  11. Jamie
    Jamie says:

    This site could become a habit. I moved to another country to pursue a passion in 2004. Gave things away, tossed some things out and put stuff in storage. 6 years later, much of that stuff is still in boxes and I have learned that I need very little to be content (even happy). Have less stuff each year. Highly recommended for everyone. Consider using sites like http://www.freecycle.org/ when getting rid of stuff. most things could be useful for someone else.
    ~jamie

  12. Samantha Gluck
    Samantha Gluck says:

    Wow! I really LOVE your blog. I have learned in the past 5 years how unimportant the material things in life really are as well. We haven’t had to move or throw everything away because of bed bugs, but we’ve lost everything (a couple of times) and life has always just gotten better afterward. God is good and I feel so blessed to have found your site! You’re so brave and honest and out there — my husband told me I was brave today (I asked an emotionally abusive family member something very difficult) and I almost cried. No one has ever called me brave before. 

  13. Mark W.
    Mark W. says:

    Every object around us is future trash.
    That’s basically what Dr. Robin Nagle, anthropologist-in-residence at the Department of Sanitation, New York City, said word for word in this 11 minute audio interview here – http://www.rnw.nl/english/radioshow/spring-1 . Also mentioned in the interview is her work on a new museum for trash in NYC. She has some good stories and a unique perspective.

  14. Steve
    Steve says:

    I have tons of money and I hate shopping and getting stuff but I have just bought a new car so that people won’t think I am poor. I feel like I have been a wimp.

« Older Comments

Comments are closed.