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paulgraham.com

209 pointssimonreed136 comments

When I moved into my first apartment after college, I brought a laptop, a sleeping bag, a folding chair, and a clip-lamp. It was great. I felt I could go anywhere and do anything.

Of course, with a new job, 650 square feet, and an an IKEA nearby, I couldn't turn down a few basics. So I picked up a spartan bed, a minimalist sofa, a function-oriented desk.

Then time began to pass. Though I'd resolved never to subscribe to cable, where was the harm in a TV to watch Netflix in comfort? Off to Best Buy to pick up a 20" on sale. Then IKEA to put something under it. Now I needed shelves. Accessories. Electronics.

Time passes. Books. Papers. Storage. A couple raises? Bigger TV! No need to sell the old one; it goes in the bedroom. Office reorganization? Don't throw away that table; it matches my sofa! Now I need chairs...

As I laid the cables for my home theater system last year, I had to confront just how far I had come from my theoretically nomadic self just a few years earlier. I had an apartment full of stuff. Some new opportunities had me contemplating the possibility of picking up and moving a great distance -- something that would have been easy not all that long ago, now made quite the unappealing prospect.

I'd kept pretty fit myself. But I realized that my lifestyle had put on a lot of pounds while I wasn't looking.

> I'd kept pretty fit myself. But I realized that my lifestyle had put on a lot of pounds while I wasn't looking.

This is a very good sentence.

The key is to keep your stuff out of your lifestyle. I have an immersion blender that I use about a dozen times a year. I got it as a gift, and it lives at the back of a cabinet underneath my kitchen counter. It's awesome!

I have three kettlebells that I use two or three times a week. They live beside my couch. There's a weight belt and a medicine ball beside them that I rarely use, and I swear I keep putting them in the closet, but the kettlebells are like a magnet for exercise-related junk.

The blender is awesome, even though I could easily live without it. The kettlebells are clutter -- until I find a good way to store them. (Any suggestions?)

Bizarre downmod. Its placement as a reply to parent doesn't make sense (it mystifies even me in retrospect) but I think I made a valid point: the classic unnecessary "junk" we rarely use doesn't hurt us when it's out of sight, but valuable possessions that serve an important purpose can drag us down if they're always in sight, altering the look of a space and affecting how we behave in it.

I know this is supposed to be an inspiring "carpe diem" type essay, but everything is susceptible to practical considerations, and with "stuff" it's important to identify the right culprit. Frivolous domestic accessories and the worthless junk in the back of your closet might not be the problem -- something eminently practical that you use regularly might be your burdensome "stuff."

I hope I made myself clear this time.

Its worth moving every 12-24 months just to avoid this. Even if you only move 5 minutes down the road. The process of culling Vs packing and shifting tends to help you dispose of junk you've accumulated. The prospect of moving again in the near future also makes you view potential purchases much more critically.

People talk about being broke so they have to hold onto all this stuff. What they neglect to to mention is the money that they paid out acquiring it in the first place. You know what's cheaper than buying that thing on sale? Not buying it at all.

I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have. Hardly anyone is so poor that they can't afford a front yard full of old cars.

Wow, Paul, you really don't understand what it is like to be poor. The poor people don't have a lot of cars in their yard because they can afford lots of cars. They have lots of cars because they never throw them away. Rich people throw lots of fine stuff away, but poor people keep everything forever, because they don't know when they can afford to buy another one.

I've been rich and poor and most of my family is still poor. While they don't have lots of cars in the yard, they are pack rats and worry constantly about a time in the future when they won't have anything anymore.

Poor people keep stuff because there may be a day when they'll need it but won't have the money to buy it. The regret of, "Oh... i had one of those but i got rid of it" is pretty strong when you need something you don't have but once did.

Or maybe people with marginal incomes spend themselves into sustained poverty through wasteful consumption. If they saved money instead of buying minimally useful possessions and saving the possessions, maybe they wouldn't have to worry about being able to afford stuff they need. You and I have probably known different sets of poor people, but I've seen cases of this.

That doesn't justify throwing things away once you have them, though, but how does one get them in the first place and were they all really necessary at the time?

you've laid it out nicely, this is the mindset of the poor and average people. I always remember the photo of Jobs's living room in the 80s. When there isn't too much crap around, you can actually focus on what matters.

I wouldn't go that far. It's the mindset of most people, almost everyone who hasn't specifically trained themselves to be minimalist. People with enough income can afford to hoard as long as you don't give them too much easy credit, though, so it doesn't hurt them in the same way it hurts people with less income.

You are right with your correction. I just read again what I wrote - it's quite harsh I see. Should have been in bed long time ago :D

My intention was: The mindset of poor and average people is commonly very affected by this, with least barriers, falling into a rat race, as a cause and a consequence.

STEVE JOBS AT HOME IN 1982 — “This was a very typical time. I was single. All you needed was a cup of tea, a light, and your stereo, you know, and that’s what I had.” —Steve Jobs

http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0712/y_walker08.html

exactly, that is the one I had in my head ;) but still made a correction bellow...

Some time later:

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2004/07/24/ho_jobs_1.jpg

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/fortune/0911/gallery.ste...

$3000 Eames lounge chair, hand-made carpet, etc.

I bet Jobs still owns that Eames chair, though.

Wow, that's possibly the most arrogant, yet typically upper-middle class thing I've seen all week on HN.

Unfortunately, the "poor people are poor 'cos they're dumb!" sentiment is way too prevalent just about anywhere you go.

I had the (unexpected and unintended) opportunity to live on the wrong side of the tracks, in an incredibly poor industrial neighbourhood - the reality is far more complex than "poor people have poor impulse spending control". To reduce it to such is incredibly out of touch with reality.

I don't think that was his point.

His point wasn't "poor people are poor because they spend too much", his point was, "maybe spending too much is part of what keeps them poor." Obviously there's a lot of factors reducing economic mobility anyway, but poor spending choices certain don't help.

The best example of this would be addiction. A lot of poor people are addicted to tobacco, alcohol, illegal drugs, etc. This puts a huge damper on any ability to save they might have.

But I'm sure he knows that sub-optimal spending decisions are just one of many reasons that poor people stay poor.

I'm not upper middle class at all. "Upper middle class" implies an income that's an order of magnitude above what my parents ever made. And I don't think spending-and-hoarding is why people are poor. Everyone spends and hoards--it's human nature. Unfortunately it's a bit of human nature that causes more problems the less income you have.

Nor did I say poor people are poor because they're dumb, or that they have poor impulse spending control, just that they might still benefit from a minimalist lifestyle. On the contrary--some that I've known have been bright and very deliberate about spending. But like most people, they still deliberately buy things they don't really need using the same poor justifications that wealthier people use.

I'm not interested in assigning any kind of blame to anyone. You're interpreting a subtext that isn't there.

> poor people have poor impulse spending control

Here in the UK it is broadly true though. It's not necessarily an intelligence or "dumb" thing. It's just that the consumer culture is enticing - and no one has been taught how to control those impulses or to budget adequately.

A lot of the poorest families do budget and consume well due to necessity. The problem is those (I think the vast majority) of people living just above poverty who "splash the cash", spend money they don't have and end up in thousands of pounds of debt.

(and, yes, I've lived in that group for a fair while. Though fortunately my parents managed the money ok)

From what I've read, there is a lot of truth to what he says. Its not that poor people are dumb, but that the short term spending that everyone does has a much bigger effect on them (as its a much bigger proportion of their income).

Caveat: The paper I'm thinking of was referring to incredibly poor people in India, so it might not necessarily carry over to all contexts.

Around my house, the poor sections of town were the ones with ridiculously tricked-out cars, and the siding on their houses was literally falling off, with lots of roof damage. They'd spend thousands on a paint job, but nothing to stop the leaky roof, drafts, and higher energy costs that go with those. I've seen nearly identical things many other places (replace cars with expensive-but-uncomfortable shoes, stereotypically-goth-$100 pants, etc).

From my experiences, it's typically that moderately-poor people spend themselves into further poverty by having poor priorities. Status-buys seem to rank higher than life-improvers.

The poor and lower-middle-class people I know don't do that. They just don't have the education or expertise that offers a job that pays more than 30k a year. There isn't much to save on 30k a year after mortgage/rent/car/insurance/kid-college-loan-payments/food, even if you're very thrifty. And God help you if you end up in that situation with an outstanding credit card balance or two.

Yeah, you can say they should have gotten the education or the expertise, and I or they or both might agree with you, but spending isn't usually the main issue.

I am from Honduras one of the poorest countries in Latin America, and if you go to poor neighborhoods you will see very cheap and small houses, but in their garage you will see very good cars, they rather have a nice car than live in a nice house or decent neighborhood. It's strange.

South Africa is one of the poorest countries, yet the #1 selling new car is a BMW. Even if they can't afford the rent, somehow people find ways to spend money on their vehicles, buying crap like alloy wheels and pointless spoilers or darkened windows. I know many people like this, it's very counterintuitive.

The logic I've typically seen is that it's a status symbol, and as a nouveau riche (relatively speaking, because relative is all that matters here) nation, status symbols are hugely important because to have something like that BMW before would've meant you were extremely rich and powerful. It's cultural lag.

You can live in your car, but you can't drive in your house ;)

you missed the point completely. It's all about status.

Cant tell if it was a joke. I blame insomnia.

Houses can be about status too. A lot of things that most people spend their money on is, or can be. Cars, houses, gadgets, clothes even holidays can be "sold" based on what your friends will think.

yes but you can't drive them around. You get yourself a cool car, wherver you go people will see a person in a cool car. You get a nice house only people in your neighborhood will know.

That is true. My parents were reduced to selling all their crockery for food during the Cultural Revolution, and we were certainly poor after we came to the US. However, we are not poor anymore, are unlikely to be poor again, and there is no longer a reason for my mother to save our used Kleenexes. I wish I were kidding.

My grandfather lived through the great depression. When it came time for my grandparents to move to a smaller house that suited them better my Mum had to throw away so much stuff that he'd accumulated out of not wanting to waste anything.

>My parents were reduced to selling all their crockery for food during the Cultural Revolution

Our crockery is pretty good, it was quite expensive but I doubt we'd get more than say £20 GBP for the lot.

Did you/they then eat from cooking pots or was it cold food only then?

The thing you seem to think I don't understand is in fact one of the main points of the essay. When you're poor you instinctively accumulate stuff. If you read a few more paragraphs on you'll come to that part.

When you're poor you instinctively accumulate stuff.

If that is the case, why is this instinct part of poor people and not rich people? I tend to see it most often in people who have lost a lot, like one of the other comments mentions living through the great depression. I see it in my grandmother and she also lived through the great depression.

However, I know some younger people who are poor and didn't live through a time of loss and do not accumulate a lot. They are minimalists. This seems to indicate to me that accumulating a lot of stuff is a learned behavior rather than an instinctual one.

Also, if it is instinctual in poor people, why is it not also instinctual in rich people, or simply all people? Is there something genetic that predisposes people to being poor? Are you implying that or am I incorrectly inferring it?

I would guess hoarding stuff is an instance of humans' general tendency to become more conservative (in this case in the most literal sense) when they feel resources are scarce. So someone who's poor by choice, like a grad student, would be less likely to. Whereas someone who grew up in an atmosphere of scarcity might be inclined to continue to hoard even if they later became rich.

I have a 90-day rule. If I have something and I haven't used it in 90 days, I probably don't need it and get rid of it (sell it, give it away, throw it out). This tends to keep my life de-cluttered and "focused". It also keeps me from waisting money on stuff I don't need. "Am I really going to be still excited about, and benefit from, using this widget I want to buy in 90 days or not?" I've lived like this for about a decade and I highly recommend trying it.

There are exceptions of course. Seasonal items like clothing, mountain bike, etc... Books too as mentioned in the essay. Having a library of coding books on-hand is not only reassuring, but has helped me save significant time solving a problem, even if I only rarely use the book. And I don't think it's a good idea throwing out your old money either. ;)

I recently decided to give away all my coding books. They were great, and I learned a lot -- but I never reference them. I remember most of the core concepts, and the details are a quick Google away. My other coworkers decided to follow suit, and our work library has grown to 4x what it was a week ago. And my apartment is slightly less cluttered.

Except books—but books are different.

I suspect most people have their own personal caveat to this essay. Mine isn't books (I usually give good books to friends after reading them, and bad books to ebay). My own caveat would be raw materials for building or repairing things (electrical components, nuts and bolts, tools, etc).

It's not especially inconvenient to own several thousand books

Until you find yourself having to move.

so true, they take up a good amount of space and there's not a heck of a lot of air accumulating in that space, just paper and a lot of it.

When I moved from home to college, I really only had 2 or 3 medium boxes of things i wanted/could take with me. Then from college to my first apartment I also had really accumulated nothing of value, and threw away a lot. When I moved from my first apartment to my second, an unbelievable thing happened. My first job brought with it a mountain of stuff. I really didn't realize it as I always kept that place spotlessly tidy (When I start to think through a piece of code I tend to walk around cleaning, its like a mindless activity that helps my mind work) The big mistake I made was using server boxes i swiped from work to move. Next time (which should be in a few months) I plan on using more smaller boxes.

I have thousands of books and would love to get rid of them. I would need a future-proof platform that allows annotations, and that lets me migrate between devices (so I can keep my books for at least my lifetime). I guess I would also need a convenient book scanner, for those books that are no longer in print.

I've often wondered why Amazon doesn't have a program like "send in your books, get a free Kindle copy of them"

I think that it's fairly clear why they don't do this --would they do it only for books purchased from amazon.com? If not, would they require some sort of proof of purchase? What about used books? What about books not currently available on the Kindle? If you send them an old edition of a book, then what edition do you get on the Kindle?-- but it's such a gorgeous idea. This has been one of the biggest roadblocks in my attempts to decide whether to buy a Kindle: I have a huge library, and the idea of spending thousands of dollars in format-shifting doesn't appeal to me. If I could even just get a discount for books that I already own, it would make me much, much more likely to take the plunge.

JPGs in PDF form? Both of those formats will be around forever.

I recently scanned a bunch of books using gscan2pdf; it makes it relatively easy, and integrates some decent utilities like Tesseract for OCR. (Some fiddling with controls meant that I could start playing a movie and mechanically flip pages and punch the scan button.)

Relatively high-resolution scans like 3-500 DPI mean you can get big PDFs (~200MB for a big anthology was normal), but this isn't much of a concern to me: I can clean them up later if I really need space, and in an era where 1.5tb is 100$, 200MB is nothing (1 or 2 cents of space?).

Scribbling in the margins of PDFs isn't very easy, and losing the ability to annotate effortlessly is a big loss for many readers.

I believe it's actually pretty easy in e.g. Preview.app on the mac.

It's really not that bad. The things that are time consuming about moving are packing, disassembling, organizing, reassembling and so on. I own over 1000 books and live on the 5th floor of a building without an elevator, and even so, with 4 people it took us about 5-10 minutes to move the books in. Packing them into boxes took maybe 20 minutes.

Even though by weight it's much lighter the book shelves are a real pain in the ass.

Books pack really easily, and they're solid enough to stack almost anything on the resulting box. It's the random junk that's hard.

i'm moving to another country in the next weeks. plan was to leave everything behind but the (academic) wife's some thousand books.

I was going to spend some little money on the shipping. Then i found out that the company would pay a ship container and give me hardly any financial support to settle there. So now i'm on full pack rat mode!

...and i can't tell you how nice and easy it was to ship only the some thousand books. Everything else by comparisson is hell. You have to fill some isurance forms on everything. Packaging is a pain. You can't separate a bed into smaller boxes like a shelf of books. Etc

"I suspect most people have their own personal caveat to this essay."

I believe anything is OK (even in large numbers) as long as it is easy for one's mind to treat it as one "item". Books (and probably your raw materials) are uniform. You put the next one with all the others and forget it, so it creates little additional drag on you. Yeah, up to a point when you need to expand storage, but the general rule remains.

I used to collect books, and then I donated them to the library. Now, I have more space, they keep track of them for me, and I can check them out whenever I want.

I tried to donate a stack of books to my local library. They weren't "new or as new" so they wouldn't accept them :( They weren't damaged. They just didn't look new.

Them not taking them wasn't so bad. I was more annoyed by the attitude of the staff who made a big song and dance as if they were doing me a favour by even considering taking free books.

A library accepting free books in good condition seemed like a no brainer to me :|

This reminds me of fight club (or at least one of the core themes), in fact one of the lines in the essay reads like it was plucked out of the movie.

Anyway, Fight Club definitely struck a cord with me and since then I have been living with incredibly little stuff. I have a computer, my iphone, my car, a desk and a bed and just enough clothes to get by for 2 weeks (do laundry once a week) and of course minor other things that you need, but basically bare essentials.

While I cant say for sure how much of an impact its had on my life, I can say without a doubt that coming home always feels very relaxing and definitely helps me prepare for a new day.

fight club: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJdfWdIBfE8

"byproducts of a lifestyle obsession" "things you own... end up owning you" "working jobs we hate so we can buy ish we don't need"

edit: link fixed

You can cuss here, if you want.

This is great. I came to the same conclusion some time ago. Of course, I never articulated it so elequently.

Anyway, anytime I bring new stuff into my house I take the same amount of stuff and put it in a box. About four times a year I call the Salvation Army and they pick up the box.

Before buying something new, I have to think about what old stuff is going in the box. Normally it isn't hard. On Christmas, when I get a lot of new stuff, it can be a challange. The worst is when someone gives me something I will never use and I have to put it right in the box, which seems ungrateful. Other than that, the box is liberating and putting stuff in it feels great.

yes I have started doing this kind of thing as well. I have a lot of crappy business casual clothes that don't really fit anymore. I don't want to toss them because I keep thinking I'll lose the weight to be able to fit back in them real soon.

What I have started doing is donating 2 pairs of old pants to Goodwill and buying 1 pair of nice pants that I will want to wash and deal with. This seems to be working well for me so far.

I also wanted to mention that our hard disks can suffer from this same problem. I have also started making an effort to delete old pdf books that I won't read, delete mp3s that I'm tired of hearing etc.

I find it particularly annoying that society in general, not just marketers, tends to pressure people into having stuff. Nobody respects the "miser" who is earning decent money and not spending it by buying things. I get a lot of flak from people who ask me that since I can afford something, why am I not adding it to my lifestyle? They wonder if I take pleasure in watching the numbers change in my bank balance.

My answer to them is usually that it's a slippery slope from buying things I can afford to buying things I don't actually need (slickdeals.net is especially good at exploiting this behavior). This tends not to sit well with them -- maybe it reminds them of a fact they are uncomfortable with and are trying to suppress?

"I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting."

On a related note , Steve Jobs has no furniture.

what does he have? walls and a floor?

He just sits indian-style and uses an iPad.

Hey, I thought it was funny.

"Levels, Jerry. With cushions ... like ancient Egypt."

http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/technology/0911/gallery....

he has a pretty good PR image.

Have you ever interviewed a politician? With jobs et all its probably the same. He will always be using that perfect entrepreneur mask and wont waste a single word not to sell you that image.

It's like reading a piece about a politician honesty and his worries about the people.

Only that with the business people the interviewer is not even trying to expose him. And if it's wired, then it's even the other way around. They will try hard to godfy ...is that a word?

deify is the word. but we get what you mean.

Sweet, I can post George Carlin and be on topic!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

What Paul doesn't really devote enough time to describing is the pleasure that getting rid of stuff brings. Reducing the amount of stuff you own is liberating. You feel physically lighter. Its not just about avoiding a burden. It is physically pleasurable to reduce the amount of stuff you are responsible for.

Go through your house and give to charity or throw out anything you haven't used in 12 months. Its amazing how much of an emotional lift this gives you.

I really dislike the cult of stuff. I'm getting married soon. We've requested people give us money or just their congratulations :) Some people however seem to think we're rude for refusing to accept stuff we don't need. Somehow we're obligated to accept a burdensome gift that we'll have to quietly dispose of. They spend money that we could use for things we do need and we have to go to the effort of getting rid of it. Its a lose lose. Yet somehow we're selfish for asking people not to buy us stuff.

This is one of the greatest insights that I have had lately - throwing stuff out is liberating and makes you feel physically lighter. Sorry to repeat you verbatim but that is exactly how I feel.

I fight with my wife over this. She wants to put something in the basement (which is already packed to the ceiling) and I am like: If you don't need it, for God's sake get rid of it. If I had my way I would thorw out everything in that basement today.

Ditto on the gifts stuff. We get a gift, typically crockery or plastic shit for the kids, and all I am thinking is how long do I have to keep this before I throw it out.

Here's a hack for children's birthday parties: If people want to bring gifts (which we discourage), we take the gift at the door and throw it in a closet, to be opened when everyone has left. This way people do not bring gifts out of social pressure, don't feel they have to top each other, and there is no disgusting gift feeding frenzy in front of the other children.

I was lucky with my then girlfriend, now fiancée. We were moving into a smaller place so she had no choice but to heavily cull her belongings. Although the process was painful she has now been converted and regularly voluntarily gets rid of more stuff just because it makes her feel good to have less junk around the place.

Your method of dealing with gifts is a good idea. I've always found publicly opening a stream of gifts a bit vulgar. Whenever possible I deal with any gifts in private or with only the gift giver there. Having an audience, celebrating the giving and receiving of stuff just seems distasteful.

"gift feeding frenzy" That is the perfect name for it.

Books: for a long time I thought that I had done something when I acquired one. Yet clearly there's a difference between the book once dipped into and on the shelf for years, and the Indian cookbook with turmeric stains all over or the tech reference with its spine worn out. I have tried lately to be more discriminating in my book buying, and not to buy another book of some type (tech, history, fiction) before I've finished the last purchased book of that type.

Books^2: When I buy a paperback novel to read on a plane (or while waiting to get on a plane :-) I often finish it in some distant city and leave it someplace where somebody else can find it. Just too much work to sell for a pittance, and too valuable to simply toss out. So I leave its fate to Fate.

Sounds a little like the philosophy of BookCrossing: http://www.bookcrossing.com/

Even as a child, I was pretty indifferent to stuff (A 9th grade essay wanted us to write about our most prized possession and I couldn't come up with anything except my computer). But I think the final break for me happened when inadequate backup procedures caused me to lose several years worth of digital photos.

I was initially heartbroken but then I started thinking how many times I had actually looked at any of those photos since I took them and, for the majority of then, the answer was zero. After that, my relationship with stuff shifted radically.

A few years later, I lost a wooden spoon which was pretty much the only thing I held an emotional attachment to anymore. That thing was older than I was and had been the one constant in cooking which is a huge part of my life. I moped for a year, shrugged and got a new one.

I'm starting to seriously consider that, once a year, I will find the thing currently most precious to me and get rid of it.

It sounds to me like you might be taking the wrong lesson away from this. Try finding the five things most precious to you and throwing away everything else.

Being affected by the loss of a spoon shouldn't make you want to never love a spoon again (that way lies crappy romantic comedies). The idea here is to concentrate our attachment to objects, not eliminate it.

I once felt the same way about a toque (yes, I'm Canadian).

I can relate to the point about how traveling realigns your ideas about stuff. I've been traveling around South America for the last 5 months with exactly one change of clothes. The general rule for long trips like this is that if you haven't used one of your possessions in 3 days, then you shouldn't have it along.

I find that I take this concept with me back to civilization. I'll get back to my storage locker and not find anything that I want to take out. "This isn't the shirt that I wear.", and "I already have enough socks" (meaning 4).

Back home in England, I can think of exactly two possessions that I've accumulated in the 3 years since I've been living there with my girlfriend: a 22" monitor to connect to the laptop, and a really nice Italian espresso machine. Both get used every day, so evidently they meet my criteria for "stuff you're allowed to have along."

I second the bit about traveling.

I relocated from Austin to San Francisco to Japan and with each move, I drastically reduced my lifestlye. It's just as PG said: you don't really miss anything.

And I dealt with books by getting an e-reader so I could carry my library in my backpack.

Reminds of an excerpt from the book, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (via http://mrteacup.tumblr.com/post/386598513/the-consummation-o...):

The consummation of desire is thus a necessarily disillusioning experience for the modern hedonist as it constitutes the ‘testing’ of his day-dream against reality, the resultant recognition that something is missing. The real experience in question may yield considerable pleasure, some of which may not have been anticipated, but despite this, much of the quality of the dream-pleasure is bound to be absent. In fact, the more skilled the individual is as a ‘dream-artist’, then the greater this element of disillusionment is likely to be. A certain dissatisfaction with reality is thus bound to mark the outlook of the dedicated hedonist, something which may, under appropriate circumstances, prompt a turning to fantasy. It is more likely, however, that the dream will be carried forward and attached to some new object of desire such that the illusory pleasures may, once more, be re-experienced. In this way, the modern hedonist is continually withdrawing from reality as fast as he encounters it, ever-casting day-dreams forward in time, attaching them to objects of desire, and then subsequently ‘unhooking’ from these objects as and when they are attained and experienced.

You can join the 100 things challenge: http://www.guynameddave.com/100-thing-challenge.html

One problem I've found with it is that people buy me worthless gifts (gifts I don't derive value from because I don't use them).

I've created an online list of things I want at kaboodle.com, or more exactly, a list of things I wouldn't mind possessing, but my family refuses buying anything on the list because that's "spoiling the surprise". I would prefer they stop giving me gifts altogether, but they won't no matter what.

My favorite quote from PG's article:

What I didn't understand was that the value of some new acquisition wasn't the difference between its retail price and what I paid for it. It was the value I derived from it.

Being a middle-middle-class American in the Midwest, I can and do pretty much just buy what it is I want or need that is on the scale of a Christmas gift my family could or would get. That, combined with geeky tastes (y'all know what I mean) virtually guarantees things-I-value-as-garbage as presents.

Next year I'm going to try picking a charity and asking for nothing but donations in my name. I'm going to pick a popular one, too, not a obscure and ignorable "geek" charity or something, but one that may actually induce guilt if they ignore the request. Maybe that will at least cut things down.

(Come to think of it, maybe I'll pick a Celiac Disease foundation or something, since I have that. A bit more self-serving, perhaps, but even more likely to induce guilt if ignored. I hate a swing "guilt" at the issue, but I've tried mere protest for a couple of years now to no effect.)

I've been doing this for quite some time.

I make plenty of money, and I have very little interest in most stuff. The only stuff that does interest me is books, video games, and computer/electronics equipment. When I want one of those things, I buy it.

I've also been involved with an animal rights organization I co-founded for 11 years or so, so every birthday I simply ask everyone to make a donation to that organization.

One of my good friends told me that this year, he gave donations to charity in the names of his family members. Great idea! My parents have been packrats, the last thing they need is more stuff. But a donation to a charity for a disease a loved one died of? Probably the best gift they could receive.

My solution was telling my family that if they wanted to get me a gift, it should be consumable. A nice bottle of wine, cheeses, beer, spices, etc. all make great gifts that you can enjoy, but don't have to deal with and store for years. They also don't feel bad about not getting you anything.

This is exactly the kind of presents I like to give and to receive. Good chocolate, a pack of good tea, a bottle of very good olive oil, nice bottle of wine.

I agree to being minimalist, with the notable exception of kitchen supplies. It's near impossible to cook interesting food without cabinets full of spices, various sized pots and pans, utensils of all shapes, and in some cases, specialty items like blenders, strainers, etc. Add to that a pantry full of food staples, and a full refrigerator, and suddenly moving anywhere is a painful process.

Life is too short to live on ramen.

I love to cook. My kitchen cabinets are stuffed with all sorts of kitchen appliances, pots and pans, and utensils. But even when cooking the most elaborate meals for up to 16 guests, I've found that I only use 5 or 6 tools out of my large (and expensive) arsenal.

I've actually moved most of my pots and pans into my outdoor storage. The ones I'll need, I'll go grab and keep inside, but after another 6 months, the rest will be up for sale on ebay--and there'll be a lot of them.

Reminds me of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

Find the few things that matter, and drop the others. This approach might apply to many areas of life.

This is so funny because I was talking to my girlfriend about this recently. We recently moved from a 700 sqft condo to a 1700 sqft house and I look around and I say "why do we need all this crap" I mean do we really need that second couch or extra desk, its really just filling the space.

I honestly look at most of the stuff we have bought and thing that it was not only a horrible waste of money but a burden. We talk about possibly moving around a bit basically move where we can both work and It keeps coming back to what do you do with the stuff.

This is terrible. We aren't rich but we are not poor either, but we are kind of in a spot where we are kind of like how can we move to another country or province(we are in Canada) when we have all this stuff.

I think in the long run if you are interested in having some freedom owning less stuff is the way to go. I know thats the direction I am know moving in.

I have lots and lots of stuff. Some I use regularly or at least often enough. Some I used to use and keep just in case, its not like its costing me. And some I got just in case, mostly science, math, and engineering books I found cheap and think I might get to some day (they are also a useful investment, I've been mostly living off of reselling some of them the last year that I've been out of work).

But I am not ruled by my stuff, I have in the past, and could again, just abandon most of it when I move again. What I know and can do is what is most important to me; and that is mostly what my belongings are actually about - books, tools, supplies for learning and doing.

"The best of all things is to learn. Money can be lost or stolen, health and strength may fail, but what you have committed to your mind is yours forever."

-- Louis L'Amour, The Walking Drum

I wonder if this got submitted now because of my submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1124086 on "The Possessions Exercise:" http://jseliger.com/2010/02/13/the-possessions-exercise-acco... .

(For those of you who don't want to click the second link, here's the money shot:

List the ten most expensive things (products, services, or experiences) that you have ever paid for (including houses, cars, university degrees, marriage ceremonies, divorce settlements, and taxes). Then, list the ten items that you have ever bought that gave you the most happiness. Count how many items appear on both lists. )

Geoffry Miller, nice! If I owed a house, it would be on both lists. Other than that, my computer, education and guitar are shared on both lists. Below those, my most expensive purchases have been necessities (think bed mattress, rent, etc). Honestly, it feels wrong to regret spending money on these. I may not love them, but they're part of the cost of living.

The list exercise might make more sense to non-students.

Books ??? - Its kind of funny on my front. I live the nomadic lifestyle and the box I have never opened since my last move has been my books. I plan never too and possible avoid any more technical book purchases. ( My bit for the environment )

How do I manage technical dilemmas ??? Google ... Seriously - Google like mad.. And i end up learning/reading a whole lot more in the general direction of my problem.

Safari books online or Books 24 x 7. I may never buy a paper copy of a technical book again.

A couple of things I've been doing:

When kids have a birthday or holiday with gifts, we tell them that they have to throw away or give away an equal amount of stuff. It works surprisingly well.

I've been thinning out my media stuff (books, videos, old records, etc.) in batches during moves, but recently began selling what I could on amazon. It's mostly CDs and books, but in the past two months it's totaled about $800. One problem, however, is many titles are worth too little for me to go through the trouble of listing, selling, packing, and shipping them. This is especially true of older books. No matter how good or important they were, about 90% sell for <$2 used on Amazon.

You can donate lower-priced titles to your local library.

Or have a used book store buy them in bulk. They won't pay much, but it's a single transaction so it doesn't use a lot of time.

I took all my CDs to Amoeba Records for store credit that I used to buy vinyl. Any CD I owned can just as easily be purchased/downloaded online, and I realized that my emotional connection is with the music -- not the CD that I haven't physically used in 5 years. CDs are only going to lose value as time goes on, so why not get the most out of them while some people are still willing to buy them? I plan to start doing the same with my DVDs. And anything that they won't take as trade in, I'm going to give away: giving away stuff on Craigslist is easier than THROWING things away.

I am moving to San Francisco from Nebraska. I pretty much got rid of all my stuff already except books, clothes, and computers. It felt awesome to get rid of everything, I suggest you try it.

I'm always aware of this when I look at model rooms for designer furniture. They are always alarmingly spartan. With that image, it's easy to notice that without the pressure of real stuff, your mind prefers it not be there.

That always struck me about IKEA. It tries to have both by trying to appeal to high design while filling their model rooms with clutter. It's very telling and a wonderful business model since they'll sell you the stuff: moose spaghetti, tiny candles, cacti.

I remember thinking the same thing about Ikea when I went through one of their catalogs last week. But I think it seems like a bad idea; it makes their products feel less enticing. I could look at their furniture and -- though the pictures still look very nice -- think to myself "how would I navigate around that with a cup of tea and a book in my hand?".

I wrote something very similar in the same exact month: http://chir.ag/20070725 - Buy Less Stuff. I honestly don't remember if I was inspired by PG's essay or it was just a coincidence. Like 'bcowcher', I even mentioned Fight-Club.

So where am I today 3 years later? I still haven't bought a lot of stuff. But I got married in 2008 and now my house is full of my wife's stuff. However, she started to get rid of a lot of her stuff. I don't need stuff to make myself feel at home but she does, as that is her only connection with her past life. I bought some clothes for myself last year (12 single-color t-shirts @ $3/each online) and a lot of running gear for my ultramarathon but other than that, barely anything.

I think the lesson here for me is that it is indeed possible to reduce your acquisition of "stuff" and maintain it. However, it depends very much on your personality. My wife likes to dress nicely and decorate the house. So we'll be stuff every night and then, hopefully not too much.

I just went through a major purge in order to downsize from a 1000 sq ft house, to a ~220 sq ft RV. I've still got too much stuff, but I'm getting closer.

Stuff weighs you down, and makes making major life changes more difficult (even if you know you need them). I stayed in Mountain View at least a year longer than I should have, from a contentment perspective, mostly because the thought of moving was just too much to handle.

Some things I will never allow myself to again have a lot of: Books, CDs and DVDs, more furniture than I use every day, more rooms than I use every day, more computers than I use every day, and anything (clothes, tools, foodstuffs, kitchenwares, etc.) that can sit in a closet or on a shelf for more than a year without being needed. Even now, I think I have probably twice as much stuff as I really need, and I'm planning to move into a smaller, but nicer, RV in a few months, once I've downsized more thoroughly.

Somewhat similar to Bruce Sterling's Viridian design movement http://www.viridiandesign.org/2008_11_01_archive.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impermanence

I think the way to get a handle on all your stuff is to turn your life inside out (or more accurately, turn it rightside out).

From an engineering standpoint, you have to design your life. You know - architect how you want to live.

From that, it's easy to deal with your stuff -- does it support your design? If it doesn't, it should go.

The computer should have a place. Kitchen stuff should live in the kitchen.

The bedroom closet is for the clothes you do use and maybe seasonal stuff at the top. It isn't for 6 boxes of cat5 and all those extra USB cables you end up with. You should not have a closet or garage full of "misc".

My personal test is the "might" test. Stuff you "might" need is not stuff you do need. It goes.

> My personal test is the "might" test. Stuff you "might" need is not stuff you do need. It goes.

Exactly. If in doubt, you don't need it.

And yet when I got back I didn't discard so much as a box of it. Throw away a perfectly good rotary telephone? I might need that one day.

Sounds like INTP tendency:

Because the present is inextricably linked to a sense of the past, INTPs tend to hoard items which help solidify the connection to the past. They find it very difficult to let go of anything they have collected (or indeed created) and which may have a nostalgic meaning.

above from http://www.intp.org/intprofile.html

I love this article.

My wife and I came to the same conclusion when we wanted to start our own thing. We needed to be flexible enough to live from anywhere a frugal life style would demand and our stuff was just weighing us down. Even storing it was going to cost alot of money - in the end we got rid of must of it.

Our books were the biggest culprits. Through bargains, we accumulated tons of novels that we've never read. Those were the first to go. The only books left were mostly references.

Books are no different from other stuff. It's better to apply the same standards to books when you you are trying to get rid of useless stuff. And it's not only about paper books (it's obvious they have huge downsides, because they are heavy). Electronic books are also should be deleted if they are not useful anymore. Our attention span is very limited, and new information tends to have better quality than old information (on average).

I often think about this. And of one more hidden cost of stuff, especially furniture: it occupies space in a place you pay rent for for. If that sofa takes 2 square meters out of my 40 square meters apartment, that means every 20th rent I pay is just because of this. If my rent is approximately the same as the price of that sofa was, I refinance if every 1.6 years.

> If that sofa takes 2 square meters out of my 40 square meters apartment, that means every 20th rent I pay is just because of this.

If you get rid of the sofa, does your landlord give you a 1/20th discount? If he doesn't, then your reasoning is a bit unsound...

Right idea, but a better argument is "does an apartment half the size cost half as much?"

That's right, he does not. But you can live in a smaller apartment or live in an apartment of the same size with more empty space which arguably is better if you ever plan to do anything creative there. Or just spend better quality time relaxing. In other words, I claim that having a room with lots of empty space in it is a value in itself. And save money on the original purchase still.

Raymond Chen (Microsoft)'s blog post on stuff: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2005/11/11/491780....

Thank you, Paul Graham, for talking me into buying another pair of shoes!

Even with books, there exists a simpler solution: the library. Plus, it's free.

Most people's bookshelves just collect dust. It's no different than having a few cars sitting in your front yard.

(July 2007)

But I am still happy to read it again. I think we need to constantly remind ourselves with advice like this. I am going to print this essay now and give copies to my wife and kids.

Sure - my comment was not a negative. The date should be in the post title though, when it's something so old (hah, 3 years old? that's ancient! What the internet does to us, eh...)

I re-read it a few days ago and thought I'd see what discussion the essay had. Was surprised to find no mention on searchyc.com. Was very surprised to see it posted today :)

This was my first time reading it, and it is a great essay.

Dunno about you, but I'm just as interested in Hacker Olds as Hacker News :) For me, marking dates in the titles doesn't really add to the discussion.

http://olds.ycombinator.com would be an interesting twist.

This especially applies to buying a house.

Kids don't builder a coarser model of the evironment, adults do. Once again pg doesn't do his resaarch before espousing his amateur psychology.

I came here to say just this. He's right for all the wrong reasons. In most mental areas, kids trounce adults; relevantly, their senses are much sharper. (Just the other day I saw an astronomer's anecdote: he was showing adults and kids some phenomena through his observatory's telescope, and the kids politely told him that it was obviously broken since the object was upside-down - the adults never noticed.)

It's not a matter of them having a smaller coaser model, as one can see by comparing how kids & adults do with the 'pile of stuff' organizational model. They just have more energy to apply to it. As one ages, one has less energy to apply to stuff, and less energy period; and one begins to appreciate minimalism.

How can something be upside down in space?

If it's close to the horizon then there's a definite "up" - towards the zenith. Many telescopes invert the incoming image, hence why the kids would've thought it was upside-down.

(I am assuming the object in question was visible with the naked eye, probably the moon, although it's also possible that the children noticed that when the telescope moved, the image appeared to move in the "wrong" direction relative to their expectations.)

I think it's about how telescopes show images upside down, except for those that flip them back with mirrors.

amateur psychologist to amateur psycologist, kids do not attach so much meaning to stuff as adults.

Kid sees a red car. It's a red car. And has two dices hanging on the mirror.

Adult sees a red car. It's a red car that cost X, was probably financed. Or does he had the money? Is that some custom paint job? When did he bought it? Is he still working at the same place?

You see, the adult didn't even noticed the dices.

I've recently started to reduce my spending on "stuff" so I can start saving for the things I've decided actually matter (a startup, a trip to Europe with my girlfriend, as well as a ring for her for whenever that moment is right) One of the key concepts of the essay is happiness will not be reduced, and possibly increased with this change in living. To this I will attest is very true, I haven't gone on the trip yet, but I already get more pleasure out of knowing I actually WILL be going on it, then if I bought a faster laptop etc.

> as well as a ring for her for whenever that moment is right

this might be an interesting read: http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond

maybe separate the ring from the 'really great mate' part?

We have too many things that do too many things.

How is it relevant to the community?

If stuff=software features, it is highly relevant

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