One good thing about our website is that we don’t just decide and rush to publish anything. All of what we write usually comes after careful, long deliberations among the editorial team.
This was how many great articles published on this website started. Putting out the best has always been our motivation.
It was this same motivation that brought us to write a series of articles on decluttering and space-saving, and we personally consider many of the methods and pieces of advice we gave as among the best on the internet!
But just as soon as we finished some of these past series of articles, we realized something important was missing there.
Something missing? Despite all our chest-beatings above!
Yes.
However, “missing” might not be the accurate word here – that ‘thing’ was actually there, it was just not given the emphasis it deserved in those articles.
And…that “thing” is the little-known, rarely-discussed relationship between consumerism and clutter.
You read us right. Consumerism and clutter!
Just like us, many publishers on the internet have discussed clutter and decluttering from many viewpoints; majorly on its causes and effects, and on its management and reversal.
However, only an extremely few of them have identified the link between consumerism and clutter.
It is that identification we made; that we discussed with our editorial team, and that necessitated our writing of this article with all the importance it deserves.
Sometimes, strangely, links are found between the most unlinkable things. Yet – even equally strangely – things that seem very similar may have no coherent link at all.
So in this matter of consumerism and clutter, are they related? what is consumerism, and what (again) is clutter? Is consumerism and clutter connected? Could the key to a perfectly decluttered life be in understanding what consumerism is?
Let’s get down to it. We have the whole day to explain. You are welcome once again!
The Coming of Consumerism: The Meaning and the History
Our favorite definition of consumerism is “the human desire to own and obtain products and goods in excess of one’s basic needs. Basic needs typically refer to having sufficient food, clothing, and shelter.” [1]
Yet, according to some, Consumerism “is a social and economic order that encourages acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts.” [2]
Both of these definitions are beautiful because they capture the role of two factors in the creation of consumerism: the socio-economic state and human unbridled desire. It is around these two concepts that consumerism is best explained.
Consumerism is an old phenomenon, yet it is quite recent. Some have dated its advent to before the industrial revolution [2], although almost all agree it matured only during and after the industrial revolution. [2]
The industrial revolution brought an extremely enlarged capacity for mass production when compared to previous periods in history.
This capacity was mainly fuelled by new industrial machines and techniques on one hand, and slavery or cheap labor on the other hand.
It was the age of steam engines and colonies: The eighteenth and nineteenth-century!
For the first time in modern history, far more manufactured goods started to be produced than the market available for them.
This has an effect; manufacturers and marketers started looking for all means to sell goods to classes of people that traditionally do not buy them.
Their approach was to use increasingly innovative means of advertising to reach and convince (even compel) more audience. The concept of planned obsolescence also gained ground. Planned obsolescence is the deliberate manufacturing of goods that are meant to be useful for only a very short period of time.
These strategies and others enable manufacturers to stay in business and spurred on by their massive advertising, it also ensure customers keep on spending on and acquiring various objects they don’t really need.
Overproduced and ultra-advertised, people started buying things more for the sake of fashion and trends than because of necessity.
It was the birth of the consumerist class.
Today, consumerism and the consumerist class is wider and more identifiable than when it first appeared over two hundred years ago.
According to Worldwatch Institute, a Washington DC based research organization, in its 2004 State of the World report, around 1.7 billion people on the planet today can now be identified as being part of the “consumer class”. [3]
The “consumer class” can be identified by their penchant to buy and accumulate non-essential goods; mainly because they are capable of buying them!
Consumerists can also be identified by lifestyles that involve inordinate spending on acquiring consumer goods and services rather than savings or investments.
They put more importance on acquiring trendy gadgets and clothes in large numbers, bigger cars and an uncountable number of household items, even when there is no clear need for the acquisition of these in their lives.
Often, the accumulation of these non-essential goods appears to make them feel good about themselves.
Tongue-in-cheek or not, the descriptions above fit most Americans of today.
It has been said that if people in other countries consume resources at the rate Americans do, we may need four or five piles of earth! [4]
In the United States alone, there are more cars than licensed drivers! [5]
Oh America!
While America’s might be extreme, similar situations can also be found in other developed countries around the world – Consumerism is a plague of developed societies.
However, America appears to top them all. [6]
Consumerism: The Finer Details.
Proponents of consumerism usually argue that consumerism keeps the economy growing because it keeps the factories working while also providing jobs.
But the counter-argument to this is already very obvious in American society.
Americans have become one of the most indebted people on the planet.[7] Consumerism keeps people in debt.
Producers employ massive adverts and manipulative sales strategies to keep Americans buying, even when such goods and services are already in excess of their needs!
The adverts are designed to make them believe their happiness in life can’t be complete without the acquisition of their products.
So they consume more and spend more, which creates a cycle of demand and more production. The producers have no fear of overproducing because they already know there is a lot of buyers out there that will mop up almost any product thrown at them!
If this sounds far fetched, let’s check out some statistics that more specifically points out the state of things:
1. According to The Wall Street Journal, Americans spend about $1.2 trillion a year on NON-ESSENTIAL items. [8] This amount is greater than the combined GDP some of the world’s poor countries.
2. In an article by Huffington Post, the EPA Office of Solid Waste disclosed that every American throws away over 68 pounds of clothing per person each year. [9]
3. According to a survey by ClosetMaid, the average American woman has 103 items of clothing in her wardrobe. [10]
These bizarre buying habits of Americans compared to the rest of the world is fuelled by nothing greater than a culture of advertisement and a high tolerance of debts ingrained in American culture – which in turn has fuelled unbridled consumerism.
Producers release new incarnations of existing products almost every year, even while their previous models are still serviceable and capable of doing the same task.
Existing products are sometimes not yet sold out in stores before new ones are released!
Advertisers are hired to sell people the idea that their happiness will only be complete when they change their products to a newer model or upgrade parts of it with newer accessories, or request for a more flamboyant level of service delivery.
Celebrity endorsements, price wars, and credit facilities are designed to keep people buying and keeping them in more debt while making them believe they are gaining benefits by acquiring a lot of manufactured goods.
Owing up to $13.3 trillion overall by 2018, American consumers have become some of the most indebted people on earth. [11]
By the third quarter of 2019, the figure was approaching $14 trillion. [12]
Scrutinizing the Causes and Effects of Consumerism
If overproduction stoked the flame of consumerism, then advertisements fanned its embers into a roaring fire.
The ashes can probably be described as “clutter”; but not before it has singed the consumerists!
How?
In 2016, companies spent more than $140 billion on advertisements in the United States alone, [13] which goes to show that the producers and marketers clearly knew what they are doing – Convincing the American consumers to buy is easily worth these billions of dollars spent on advertising.
Advertisements started not more than mere efforts to make you and your goods noticed in the marketplace, but since the advent of the consumerist society, it has increasingly become a tool to manipulate the buyers’ minds and preferences, and more evilly, to play on their insecurities.
It is not uncommon to see adverts overtly suggesting buyers can ONLY be happier, wealthier, cleaner etc. only by buying the product(s).
Despite its mega scale, this used to be limited only to the screens of our TVs, on our radios, on billboards and within the pages of newspapers and magazines, but with the advent of the internet, the story has now changed.
Gone are the days when marketers can only gauge our likes and dislikes by mailing us lengthy questionnaires.
The internet has now made it possible for marketers to analyze our buying habits simply by following our browsing habits.
And we leave our browsing signatures behind us clearly like footprints on a snowy night!
The advertisers have learned to read this and market to us goods that will be hard to resist for anyone with a disposable income, and after the 2008 recession, we all seem to have a lot of that.
The effects of overproduction is overadvertisement, the effect of overadvertisement is a bedazzled populace, and when we have a bedazzled populace, you can sell almost anything to them any number of times.
And the effects of an average American woman having 103 items of clothing will sooner to later tell on the environment.
Yes, the environment.
The Toll of Consumerism on the Environment
The artificially created demand for unnecessary goods make companies use up resources at a greater rate, in addition to creating more waste and pollution in the process and it may be a notable contributor to global warming.
Yet, this is only the level of waste at the point of production. The level of waste generated at the point of consumption is in the trash bins and closet of the average American home.
You can go and check for yourself!
Consumerism and Clutter, the Overlooked Link.
A hallmark of our modern lives is having tools and gadgets that supposedly solve all of our problems.
But we have acquired most of these tools and gadgets mainly because of the promise (and the innate psychology) in advertisements and not because we cannot do without them.
While these acquisitions are sometimes useful, many are redundant and constitute clutter in our lives.
To understand the psychology of clutter and how to deal with it, read this article.
Sometimes, clutter might constitute waste, which means the acquisition of redundant objects and properties that will later constitute clutter might be a waste of money in disguise.
More broadly, acquiring objects that won’t add any value to our lives, however trivial, is a sign that we are building ourselves a selfish society that only values the indulgence of the self.
Overindulgence has consequences. These are already showing in increasing environmental problems like land and sea pollutions.
The first lifeline to sanity is to recognize that we can all easily live on far less than most of us have currently acquired, and do so in average comfort.
We just have to learn how to be less selfish and more satisfied with less.
The link between consumerism and clutter is clearer than day – Consumerism is the start, clutter is the end. You can’t have one without the other following soon.
This link cannot be broken until one is eliminated, and to be unequivocal, the one that has to be eliminated is consumerism!
Once consumerism is eliminated, the days of clutter in our lives will be over.
To eliminate consumerism in our individual lives, here are a few advice to follow:
1. Stop ‘Keeping up with the Joneses’, find satisfaction with your current status in life and you will be happy. You can never achieve true happiness by unbridled acquisition of material things.
2. ‘Reduce, reuse, recycle’ is a mantra of the green movement. Adopt this mantra in managing what you already have and you will have little reason to buy more.
It will also help the environment.
3. Know that the best things in life are actually free: a good relationship with your parents and extended family is cheap and even free, while a consumerist binge at the nearest shopping mall is not. Money cannot buy happiness.
4. No matter how much the credit companies say, recognize that debt is not good for anybody. If your consumerist lifestyle haven’t lead you into debt already, know that it will lead you into it sooner or later.
5. Provide yourself a high quality of life with lesser material things. If you think living a good life is dependent on having material things, take a trip around the world and you will see Romanis that are happier than you!
Frequently Asked Questions on Consumerism And Clutter:
What's Consumerism?
Probably the best definition of consumerism is “the human desire to own and obtain products and goods in excess of one’s basic needs. Basic needs typically refer to having sufficient food, clothing and shelter.”
Two factors play a large role in creating consumerism: the socio-economic state and an unbridled human desire for consumption.
Who are consumerists?
Consumerists can be identified by lifestyles that involve inordinate spending on acquiring consumer goods and services rather than savings or investments.
Consumerists are those who put more importance to acquiring trendy gadgets and clothes in large numbers, bigger cars and an uncountable number of household items, even when there is no clear need for the acquisition of these in their lives.
What causes consumerism?
Overproduction and massive advertisement. Some may argue that it is caused by a rise in the amount of disposable income across sections of society.
Does consumerism cause clutter?
Yes. The link between consumerism and clutter is very clear – Consumerism is the start, clutter is the end. You can’t have one without the other following soon.
Can I declutter while being a consumerist?
That will be extremely difficult for you. Consumerism has to be eliminated from our lifestyles or at least reduced before we can fully declutter our lives.
References:
1. The good and bad sides of consumerism – https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/the-good-and-bad-sides-of-consumerism (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
2. Consumerism – https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumerism (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
3. As Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers, Study Says – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2004/01/consumerism-earth-suffers/ (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
4. Biologists think 50% of species will be facing extinction by the end of the century – https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/feb/25/half-all-species-extinct-end-century-vatican-conference (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
5. As Consumerism Spreads, Earth Suffers, Study Says – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2004/01/consumerism-earth-suffers/ (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
6. The 25 Largest Consumer’s Markets –
The 25 Largest Consumer’s Markets … And The Outlook For 2015(Retrieved 16-1-2020)
7. Here are the countries with the biggest debt slaves – https://www.businessinsider.com/these-are-the-countries-with-the-biggest-debt-slaves-2017-1 (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
8. Number of the Week: Americans Buy More Stuff They Don’t Need – https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/04/23/number-of-the-week-americans-buy-more-stuff-they-dont-need/ (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
9. Closet Cast-Offs Clogging Landfills – https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_554400?test_ad=us_teads_amp_test (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
10. The average amount of clothes a woman has in her closet will surprise you – https://www.her.ie/life/the-average-amount-of-clothes-a-woman-has-in-her-closet-290514 (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
11. Consumer Debt Reaches $13 Trillion in Q4 2018 – https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/research/consumer-debt-study/ (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
12. Americans now have a record $14 trillion in debt – https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/13/business/household-debt-student-loans-fed/index.html (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
13. How “The Americans” highlights the dangers of consumerism – https://www.americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2018/04/12/how-americans-highlights-dangers-consumerism (Retrieved 16-1-2020)
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