Architecture can tell us a lot.
When I visit historic log cabins, I always wonder at the single bare room and its one mantle or shelf for storage. It makes me realize how little in the way of possessions these early Americans had!
Fast forward 150 years to my grandmother's house -- and the storage possibilities are not a whole lot better. She had a distinct paucity of cabinets in the kitchen and if you wanted storage in the bedroom you had to buy a piece of furniture called a wardrobe. Houses just didn't have closets.
In the 50's my mother's house was brand new and included a tiny, shallow closet in each bedroom, a small cabinet for linens in the bathroom, half-again more kitchen cabinets than her mother had, and an attached single car garage that provided a nook for the washing machine.
When my parents bought their new house in the 60's, builders were touting their walk-in pantries in the kitchen, utility rooms inside the house, and double garages with storage areas!
The house I live in now (built in the mid-1980s) has a walk-in closet in each bedroom, built-in shelves and walls of built-in cabinets throughout the house, extensive cabinets in the kitchen, finished attic space, and on and on.
Today, brand new houses in my area feature master bedroom closets the size of rooms and three car garages.
And if that isn't enough, recent years have seen the rise of the storage industry. I can rent an additional off-site storage area in case I have too much stuff for my house -- or have one of those retangular portable storage things placed on my driveway.
One of the most popular stores is the Container Store where you can buy expensive closet "systems" to organize the overflowing stuff in closets.
We've moved from having very little . . . to a fixation on storing and organizing our stuff. I'm wondering if we have a tail-wagging-the-dog situation here. As a society, we seem to have become servants to our possessions.
2 comments:
I think part of the problem is we have become specialized in everything, and we have lost a holistic view and approach to life. When the world industrialized people started spending their work time not understanding their role, which took away from job satisfaction, but let us make lots of stuff for cheap. We exchanged work satisfaction for stuff, and the result of that is we now have lots of stuff and we are trying to make satisfaction come out of it.
Can you think the last time that people spent good time without it being driven by a thing (game/event/marketing ploy?). If I don't count church, I can't think of the last time I just hung out with a big group of people just for the enjoyment of being with people. I think we need to radically change the way that we find enjoyment in our lives, or we will always be looking at the next thing we can buy to make us temporarily happier.
AMEN.
Also, I've noticed that stuff has a way of dragging me down/ It makes demands of me. If you own it, you have to maintain it, repackage it, repair it, update it -- serve it! Good grief.
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