Why Do Americans Have So Much Stuff?

hello I'm Lawrence and I'm on a quest to uncover all of the memos that Britain and America lost in the pond and one of those memos pertains to stuff good old stuff everybody's got stuff but some people have more stuff than others which brings me onto a philosophical question that I've heard a lot since moving to the United States do Americans have too much stuff and I know what you're thinking oh Lawrence that's rich coming from a Brit who's surrounded by 16 billion boxes well firstly I am also American so these boxes might bolster the argument of the yes Brigade but secondly the boxes are empty dumped here in the spare bedroom so that they can later be broken down by me and my wife mostly Maeve entirely me [Music] of course the very existence of empty boxes suggests that they once contain possessions which may or may not be strewn around the rest of the house and if you haven't subscribed to this channel do that now in many ways I've always tried to live my life minimally in other words to have the bare minimum of possessions in order to live and live well so when I moved to America I was surprised to find that many households indulge in an unconscious practice known as hoarding and it seems like there are two types of Hoarders right there are those that will walk into Walmart clear all of the shelves of the beans and stock up for the apocalypse that's more conscious the unconscious hoarders that I've encountered in the United States are those that over a period of time just acquire a lot of stuff [Music] this stuff whatever it might be a collection of candlesticks a bean bag or a lava lamp from the 90s can end up in various rooms like the basement where it's out of the way or the garage that you don't use for your vehicles because you've got a driveway and my feeling on this is that Americans might well be more predisposed to unconscious hoarding I think when you account for the fact that American houses on the whole are considerably bigger than those in the United Kingdom it probably lends itself to this mindset it's like oh we've got this massive house right we can just push all of the stuff we don't use down into the basement where nobody will see it for three years including myself and what do Americans do when they find all this stuff one of America's favorite pastimes not baseball yard sales yard sales or jumble sales as they're known in the UK are a big fixture of Midwestern life especially at this time of year you'll be driving down the street on your way to Arby's when all of a sudden out of the corner of your eye you see this table containing some porcelain dolls and a sweet vinyl collection so you pull over meet some people that you're never going to speak to again in your life hand them fifteen dollars and go home with the best of Kenny Rogers I was jet lagged in 2014 the LA Times reported that the average American household contains a whopping 300 000 items now I don't know about you but I can't even list three hundred thousand items and even if I could the only people that would watch that video are the same people that say Lawrence I could honestly watch a YouTube sensation such as yourself read the phone book to be fair that's about three-fifths of my audience which as fate would have it is about 300 000 people but in any case the number could be dubious try as I might to sift through the Clutter I couldn't find a study that corroborates the average number of household items in a America but there are some other telling statistics out there remember a few months ago when I said this welcome to the first garage that I've ever owned right here in Illinois and it's quite a lot bigger than the garage that you know I grew up in I didn't grow up in it I grew up in a house that had a garage in England and it was much smaller than this one it's big enough for two cars we only have one car well that same LA Times article reported Federal findings that a quarter of Americans who own two-car garages don't use them for automobiles if that's you let us know what you do use them for but just be advised that the FBI may be vetting the comments [Music] there are roughly 120 million households in America around 11 of those or about 13 million households are currently renting a storage unit now there could be multiple reasons for this right perhaps they're in flocks between one home and another perhaps their garage is in the process of being built or perhaps they have more stuff than their house concurrently house but to put things into perspective British households among the highest users of storage facilities in Western Europe only rent them at a rate of two percent almost a sixth rate of Americans and instead of speculating on whether or not Americans own too much stuff whatever the metric for that might be who better to ask than Americans themselves in 2016 the Online Marketplace OfferUp did precisely that they found that 72 percent of Americans believe they would gain more space in their homes by purging unused items while 41 of Americans insisted they hadn't decluttered for over a year clearly America has a stuff problem or does it is the acquisition of material possessions always a bad thing well I think it depends on who you speak to if you speak to Young Lawrence he'd tell you this I thrive on clutter mind you that's because I'm a tortured artist whose creative process relies on discarded KitKat rappers if you ask present day Lawrence I'd tell you that perhaps there's room for a happy medium after all we each have household items that aren't particularly necessary but are worth keeping around because they're sentimental like this library book I took out when I was 12 or because they spark Joy like this library book I took out when I was 12. either way there's a big part of me that periodically prefers to purge possessions and given the sheer number of garage sales it seems that my fellow Americans often feel the same way and how can we not especially when it now means we can go for a lie down in that once cluttered spare bedroom so if you know of any mattress companies that would sponsor my videos please let me know and that's it for this episode I'm Lawrence from before YouTube was invented if you like this video go and watch my visit to Lowe's where I picked up more clutter be sure to follow me on Twitter at lost in the pond us and don't forget to subscribe to this channel so that I don't have to as ever a big thank you to my patrons who paid for about 10 of the stuff in my house plus this wig if you would like to become a patron of Lost in the pond you can do so today at patreon.com lost in the pond until the next video goodbye

Channel: Lost in the Pond

Views: 161,565

Keywords: Laurence Brown, America, Stuff, Americans

Id: OGElT2bYMLY

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 12 2023