Stuff Wars

“Listen up, soldiers! We’ve got incoming at eighteen-hundred hours. I need you to give me all you’ve got. Move, move, MOVE PEOPLE!”

My husband and I were expecting dinner guests. Like drill sergeants, we barked orders at our three young children to put away toys, stack diapers, shelve books, lock bikes, gather Legos, make beds, and fold clothes.

As they will testify, it wasn’t pretty.

Quite frankly, we were weary from managing all the stuff we have acquired as proper American consumers. When the traditional tactic of sorting our stuff into even more cute baskets from Pottery Barn failed, it became clear that a much more aggressive strategy was required.

I have now declared war against the ludicrous influx of stuff into our home and lives. As a mom, I consider it a just war born of moral duty to my children. As a person of faith, I consider it a holy war.

One market research firm estimates that those of us who live in cities can see up to five thousand ads per day. Most are designed to entice us to buy products which we do not want and do not need with money we do not have.

A few years ago my five-year-old daughter impressed me by memorizing an address she’d just heard at the end of her animated children’s videotape.

“Mom! Mom!” she hollered, running into the kitchen. “If we send them a postcard right now, the first issue is FREE!”

“Really!?” I asked, trying to sound astonished. “Honey, what’s an issue?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

Since then, my husband has taught our three kids to recognize retailers’ shameless promotional efforts which bombard them on television, toys, cereal boxes, and computer screens.

“Why do you think they tell you to visit their website?” he asked recently.

“To get us to buy something,” they dutifully drone, sounding far more exasperated than their single-digit years should allow. They learned quickly that this is always the right answer to any of his media-scrutinizing inquiries.

In most parts of the world, of course, acquiring and consuming sufficient resources for survival demands the bulk of daily human energy. From where I stand, more of my effort must be spent resisting the gluttonous consumption which is my comfortable American lot.

I never cease to find this truly absurd.

Though I don’t expect pity, it does take a measure of strategy to skirt the relentless advance of unwanted, and desperately wanted, stuff into our home. I scheme to avoid buying cereal boxes promising big red dog stickers or green bobble head ogres. Unsolicited school photo order forms are sent back to my children’s classrooms without payment. Too-frequent school book order forms are tossed into the trash. When a catalogue featuring bulk quantities of cheap plastic toys arrives in the mailbox, I quickly destroy the sinister porn meant to entice and titillate my children.

As one might imagine, my resolve is tested daily.

The problem of too much stuff is not new. A few years back Jesus told the story of one guy with a storage-efficiency system to rival anything Pottery Barn has to offer. After a great harvest, he reasoned, “This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.” (Luke 12:17-18, NIV) Pretty clever, huh? Jesus didn’t think so.

Many faith traditions do include practices of moderation. The Roman Catholic Church names abstinence as the holy virtue which opposes gluttony. The practice encourages individuals to move through the world with a constant mindfulness of others. Strangely, the religious icon that has come to quicken my own remembrance of the world’s hungry and poor children is the useless bobble head toys I spy on the dashboards of other cars.

Like I said, truly absurd.

I have come to believe that this practice of mindfulness of others, coupled with temperance, is the only effective strategy to win the crusade against stuff.

I invite other warriors to join the crusade. You’ll recognize us by our battle cry: “DON’T CHARGE!”

Margot Starbuck, a freelance writer, lives in Durham, NC. Her forthcoming memoir with InterVarsity Press, The Girl In The Orange Dress: Searching For a Father Who Does Not Fail, is due out in Fall 2009. Learn more at www.MargotStarbuck.com.

Share: Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Stumbleupon | Permalink