A sign of spring in my neighbourhood is the appearance of items set at the edge of lawns right near the sidewalk. On spring weekends, you can go shopping along the residential streets and pick up free items that people have left out. Spring cleaning is the annual ritual of clearing out our basements and closets, and we love it because it makes us feel lighter. As Marie Kondo, the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up puts it: “Putting your house in order is the magic that creates a vibrant and happy life.”
If having less “stuff’ in our homes makes us feel better, why do we have so much of it in the first place? I’ll let you answer that question for yourself!
Over-consumption has many problems. For one thing, a lot of the stuff in our homes is not making us any happier - it's weighing us down actually. It’s also a global problem: according to the United Nations, the consumption of goods is the greatest driver of our environmental crisis. The extraction and processing of resources to support the growing need for our “stuff” accounts for more than 90% of our biodiversity loss and water stress, and about half of our climate change impacts, and Canadians are a big part of the problem.
And of course, shopping doesn’t do our credit card balance any favours. Many of us saw our credit card bills shrink during the first part of the pandemic as buying things became difficult. Having my access to shopping curtailed during the early days of COVID showed me that all the shopping I used to do didn’t make me happier. What about you? Did the pandemic-induced spending curtailment have a lasting impact on you? Have your consumptions habits changed?
We could be spending our “stuff” money on things that give us a bigger happiness return. You might feel more secure by putting some of the money you are saving into your retirement account. If spending money on going to the theatre, a concert, or on a road trip makes you happy, you’ll benefit from those memories and the richness they added to your life.
It’s a great time to think about our consumption habits and the impact that our love of stuff has on our happiness, our planet, and our financial security.
