Mine!

"Have you ever noticed, your shit is stuff and his stuff is shit?"
Thank you Mr Carlin for that very exacting thought. When you get right down to it, really, it is all just stuff. How much stuff can you really have, or how much stuff do you really need? Here in North America, we seem to be driven to have more and more stuff. It really seems to be a status symbol and I am not refering to the mega rich who own 20 cars, 2 yachts and more houses than any one person could use. I am talking about Ma and Pa Kettle, the kind of people who do the work in todays world.

It starts out small. They meet, get married and have their first apartment - 1 bedroom, a living room, a dining room/kitchen. All this empty space, gotta get some stuff to put in it. So, a table and chair set for the dining room, couch and chair for living room, a bed and dresser for the bedroom. Soon every room has some stuff in it and life is good.

"GREAT, ONCE IN A LIFETIME SALE, COME ON DOWN AND SEE OUR STUFF!" gets blasted at these two people and they go to see this new stuff. They buy some of it and bring it home and figure out where they are going to put it. A little here, a little there and soon there is no more room for all of their stuff. What to do? They put some of the stuff in a storage locker, stuff they won't use very often. Now there is room in the apartment for more stuff. Soon the storage locker is full of stuff that hasn't been looked at in a year and the apartment is overful of  more stuff, what to do now? They go out and buy another storage locker. This happens again and again until they need another and another locker.

Think I am out to lunch with this? How many storage facilities can you name in your city? I can immediatly give you directions to 5 and Victoria is only 300,000 people. How many shows on TV are directly related to how much stuff people have, Storage Wars, Hoarders, Pickers.... We have been told that we must have this stuff, it is important to have it, to hold it near, never let it go.

Have a look at your own stuff, how much of it do you have? How much of it do you use? How much of it will you miss if it isn't there? I personally have 3 laptops that are sitting on a shelf, collecting dust, but they are mine and I want them.

Time to get some place else to store some of my stuff.