Look around yourself and almost all of us can say this:

• we have a greater variety of food than what our parents had
• we all live in houses bigger than what our parents had
• we all have personal means of transport which many of our parents did not have
• we have more dresses than what our parents had
• we have more newspapers, pink papers than our previous generation
• we have more sources of data – computer, phone, ipad, newspaper…

In short we have too much of everything, and it is time we paused. It is amazing as to how much we like to ‘own’ immaterial of how much we ‘use’. I have 6 pants – all black. Seriously, it means less choice.

Imagine if you have one car – do you have to ‘choose’ which car to use? Now make this possible for everything that you own.

I got a lot of data from UK and US press – India may not be far away. This data is from various sources and websites on minimalist living.

Here are surprising statistics about 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

2. The average size of the American home has nearly tripled in size over the past 50 years

3. 1 out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage—the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades.

4. The United States has upward of 50,000 storage facilities, more than five times the number of Starbucks.

6. British research found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily

7. 3.1% of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally

8. The average American woman owns 30 outfits—one for every day of the month. In 1930, that figure was nine.

9. The average American family spends $1,700 on clothes annually. Ask you daughter, she may not be far off.

10. I know that the average American has to throw away a lot of clothing – every year.

11. I know one Indian who had 20 unopened NEW shirts at one point in time.

11. Nearly half of American households don’t save any money

12. Almost all the houses that I know have more than one television set.

13. Our material consumption has at least doubled in the past 25 years

14. 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).

The numbers paint a jarring picture of excessive consumption and unnecessary accumulation. 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.

source: becomingminimalist.com and others