Oh man. I now have the book Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century and it's absolutely fascinating. It's written by two professors of anthropology at the University of California and at Connecticut College and it's so engrossing.
It features, in photographs and example, 35 Los Angels families, but it came out of a "larger interdisciplinary and collaborative research endeavor by the Center on Everyday Lives of families at UCLA."
I'm finding it fascinating. I was close, too, on the books in the average home: 438.
One reason I'm finding it fascinating is it makes me feel better about my "Junk Room," which nobody is allowed to see. Apparently the norm is to live a cluttered existence.
It says, in fact, in a chapter titled "Most Possessions Per Family in Global History" that "Never before has any society accumulated so many personal possessions. US households spend on average tens of thousands of dollars every year on new purchases. A substantial portion of these expenditures goes toward replacement goods such as trendy apparel and the latest media electronics, not to mention the newest models of cars. Many of these objects replace perfectly good antecedents that homeowners may only reluctantly part with. The result is typical clutter amassing in 'back stage' storage areas such as garages, closets, and attics, eventually extending to 'front stage' living spaces."
It also says there's a direct correlation between the amount of stuff on [edited for clarity] the front of your fridge door, photos, magnets, etc., etc., and the amount of clutter you can tolerate. Do you find that to be so?
On the books, the average counts per Los Angeles family are:
Books and Magazines: 438
Music CDs: 212
Toys: 139
DVDs and VHS Tapes: 90
Shoes (pairs) 39.
So you can see how typical you are against these Los Angeles families. These are all "visible artifacts" and don't include those hidden from view.
(Isn't it interesting to hear one's "stuff" called an artifact?)
This is making me want to:
(1) Remove all clutter immediately from the "front stages" of my house as the photographs are depressing and cause a strange uneasiness in this reader.
(2) Remove all the clutter from the "back stages," since I could not find the Halloween decorations this year, and....
(3) Learn more and finish the book, it's absolutely fascinating. I'm looking at "The Myth of 'Convenience' Foods," how many times we really sit down for dinner as a family together, television and daily life, what kind of leisure we really spend at home and what we are doing for that leisure and what we say we are doing for that leisure, and fascinating facts: ("Americans have thrown out roughly 3 billion pounds of computing equipment during the last few decades.")
It's fascinating, it really is. And as it turns out, everything you choose to surround yourself with says volumes about YOU. I just handed it to my husband, it showed a garage absolutely stuffed to the gills. This is his hang up: he hates clutter. Sees no need in buying things. How we live now in America, cluttered. It makes you want to go out and rip everything from the house. hahahaa
