Most of us know we own too much stuff. We feel the weight and burden of our clutter. We tire of cleaning and managing and organizing. Our toy rooms are messy, our drawers don’t close, and our closets are filled from top to bottom. The evidence of clutter is all around us.
Today, data is constantly being collected about our homes, our shopping habits, and our spending. The research is confirming our observation: we own too much stuff. And it is robbing us of life.
Here are 21 surprising statistics about our clutter that help us understand how big of a problem our accumulation has actually become.
1. There are 300,000 items in the average American home (LA Times).
2. The average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years (NPR).
3. And still, 1 out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage—the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades. (New York Times Magazine).
4. While 25% of people with two-car garages don’t have room to park cars inside them and 32% only have room for one vehicle. (U.S. Department of Energy).
5. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks. Currently, there is 7.3 square feet of self storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation. Thus, it is physically possible that every American could stand—all at the same time—under the total canopy of self storage roofing (SSA).
6. British research found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily (The Telegraph).
7. 3.1% of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally (UCLA).
8. The average American woman owns 30 outfits—one for every day of the month. In 1930, that figure was nine (Forbes).
9. The average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually (Forbes).
10. While the average American throws away 65 pounds of clothing per year (Huffington Post).
11. Nearly half of American households don’t save any money (Business Insider).
12. But our homes have more television sets than people. And those television sets are turned on for more than a third of the day—eight hours, 14 minutes (USA Today).
13. Some reports indicate we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago (The Story of Stuff).
14. Currently, the 12 percent of the world’s population that lives in North America and Western Europe account for 60 percent of private consumption spending, while the one-third living in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa accounts for only 3.2 percent (Worldwatch Institute).
15. Americans donate 1.9% of their income to charitable causes (NCCS/IRS). While 6 billion people worldwide live on less than $13,000/year (National Geographic).
16. Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry, and watches ($100 billion) than on higher education (Psychology Today).
17. Shopping malls outnumber high schools. And 93% of teenage girls rank shopping as their favorite pastime (Affluenza).
18. Women will spend more than eight years of their lives shopping (The Daily Mail).
19. Over the course of our lifetime, we will spend a total of 3,680 hours or 153 days searching for misplaced items.The research found we lose up to nine items every day—or 198,743 in a lifetime. Phones, keys, sunglasses, and paperwork top the list (The Daily Mail).
20. Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential goods—in other words, items they do not need (The Wall Street Journal).
21. The $8 billion home organization industry has more than doubled in size since the early 2000’s—growing at a staggering rate of 10% each year (Uppercase, note: link no longer available).
The numbers paint a jarring picture of excessive consumption and unnecessary accumulation. Clearly, many of us have far too much stuff.
Fortunately, the solution is not difficult. The invitation to own less is an invitation to freedom, intentionality, and passion. And it can be discovered at your nearest drop-off center.
Further reading:
For more helpful tips, here’s an article filled with tips on how to declutter your home. You can also use our Decluttering Checklist to keep yourself organized and focused.
For a complete lifestyle change that will prevent clutter from coming back into your life, learn more about simple living from this article on minimalism.
About Joshua Becker
Regarding the time women spend shopping: does this include grocery shopping and shopping for other essentials? Women tend to do more of this than men do, as far as I understand.
Regarding the double car garages: I’m curious about the statistic that says 32% of respondents can only fit one car in their double car garage. I wonder if that includes people like my family, who have a double car garage, but only one car. We use that other half to park bikes and a clothes line – we would need to do some serious re-organisation if we were to buy a second car!
My neighbor, who shops the TV channels, had a bedroom remodeled into a walk in closet. There are still people who are shopping like mad for clothes, toys and decor items.
I lost EVERYthing in the Thomas fire in Dec 2017. Now I’m moving and I’m stunned at how much cr*p I’ve accumulated….living in a studio apartment!
Some people can’t live on their income. When I worked in an office, I brought my lunch most of the time. It was a painless way to save $25 each week. Painlessly, that’s about $1000 a year. When my kids got old enough, I told them to watch the choices people made with money. My daughter had a friend she accompanied to the local mall. My daughter took $5. Her friend took $40. I asked if they were going shopping for clothes. My daughter got lunch and a drink. Her friend got a bigger lunch, a more elaborate drink and candy and junk jewelry. I am 70 years old, when I was a kid,.We made things with newspapers, cardboard, and string.
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I try to give away anything I haven’t used in a year. I have very few clothes. I have given away bags and bags of craft supplies. My neighbors give me magazines and when I finish them, I recycle or pass them on. There is still plenty to give away. I need very little.
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I can understand the bit about the growing home organization business. I’ve always loved home organization tools, and they were often one of my impulse buys. But now I realize that buying “something” is just a bandaid. It made me feel like I checked something off my to-do list when really it just added to the clutter.
I am always fascinated how people park $10,000’s in vehicles in the driveway and on the street, in the elements, so they can store $100’s in crap in their garage. If you don’t use it, ditch it.
Good point!
Feel like I should read this daily to remind myself and others to downsize.
Interesting, however I’m skeptical of the numbe of Starbucks!
I’m skeptical about the teenage girls and mall shopping. I think that statistic is from the 90s. My niece and her friends shun malls. They do buy things online and from local specialty boutiques, but the mall thing is over and they all own less stuff than I did in 1980s. Our local mall is ready to be bulldozed. It would be an empty shell if it wasn’t for the military recruiting offices, a Best Buy, a movie theater, Kohls and a a half dead Sears. All the smaller stores have windows covered over in paper.
Its a beautifull world full iif music, art, nature…we have talents to explore……stop shopping start living!
One does not need to be a “miminalist” – just a “reasonableist”.
That’s what minimalists are. =)
I am really impressed. People think buying more and more it’s better. We need to stop! i need to practice minimalism too, it feels so good de-owning!