Too Much Stuff

In my journey to be more minimalistic, I came across THIS article and am absolutely disgusted by the numbers.

Some of the statistics truly baffled me and some were not so surprising.
300,000 items in the average home! That's insane. I sort of want to go through my home and count EVERYTHING. haha! Except, I have other stuff to do so I won't be doing that. ;)

In 1950 the average size home was 983 sq ft, in 1978 it was 1650 sq ft, and today we are up to a whopping average of 2389 square feet. Seriously, I'd lose my family in that size of house. Our home was built in 1954 and is 998 sq ft. True, it gets a little tight with 4 people, 2 dogs, and 1 cat living inside it but it's not that bad. We do wish for a 3rd bedroom sometimes. A 2nd bathroom seems like a luxury. However, I really like having a smaller house. I love that we are all able to be together and it's really great when cleaning. It doesn't take quite as long as if my house was double or triple this size. I have decided that I never want a large house.

According to the article, the average 10 year old has 238 toys but only plays with 12 of them!!! How crazy is that? I don't know how many toys my kids have (definitely less than 200 toys in the bedroom), however, I have decided that when we switch rooms - they are going to get the master bedroom and we're going to the smaller bedroom - I'll let each of them choose twelve toys to keep and the rest will be donated. The article also states that the US has 3.1% of the world's children but has 40% of the toys consumed globally. How crazy is that? It just makes me feel really spoiled living in the US. There are so many things I tend to take for granted living here.

Clothes -- so many clothes. The average woman has 30 outfits!! That's a different one for every day of the week. I have posted about my minimalist wardrobe already. Click HERE if you want to see my current spring wardrobe.

Did you know that most homes have more televisions than people? I only have 1 television but we have computers and other devices where we can watch Netflix if we want. So, if we think of it this way, then we are guilty of it too.

The article really put things in perspective for me and made me realize how much work I still need to do in my minimalist journey.