Much Ado About Stuff!
by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com
Stuff. I’m talking about the many things we buy and collect. According to the Los Angeles Times, there are 300,000 items in the average American home. NPR reports that the average size of the American home has tripled in size over the past 50 years.
This ties into a bit that famed comedian George Carlin did on stuff years ago. (If you saw it even once, you’ll remember it. If not, be sure to YouTube it.) He claims a house is just a place to keep all your stuff and asks, “What are you gonna do with all that stuff?” and “How come my stuff is s%#t and your s%#t is stuff?”
So, how much stuff do we really need?
I’ve been told that I have a lot of stuff and I won’t deny it. My office is cluttered with mementos, pictures, tchotchkes, collectibles, etc. To others, it might seem like junk. To me, while I may not “need” much of it, I sure enjoy my stuff. Many of my friends are the same way, collecting baseballs, old radios, stamps, cars, watches, writing instruments, guitars, books, hats, autographs, wine, pinball machines and so on. It’s endless.
When I go, my wife Joanne will probably put most of my stuff on the curb. After all, what is she going to do with it? Many of the things we treasure simply aren’t going to be appreciated by our loved ones. Who wants Grandma’s china, silverware or dining room set? Nobody. Younger people have different priorities and are just fine with using higher-quality disposable plates and utensils for family holiday events instead of the fancy stuff.
Look, we’re not here for a long time…we are here for a good time, right? (That’s not my quote but you might as well eat the cake and buy the shoes.) If you work hard to buy stuff and enjoy it, what’s wrong with that? After all, the stuff you buy creates jobs for the people who make, sell, ship and maintain the stuff. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s good stuff!
You might be interested in some stats I found online about our preoccupation with stuff:
1. Amazingly, one out of every 10 Americans rent offsite storage, making it the fastest growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades. (New York Times Magazine)
2. About 25% of people with two-car garages don’t have room to park cars inside them and 32% only have room for one vehicle. (U.S. Department of Energy)
3. British research found that the average 10-year-old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily. (The Telegraph)
4. The U.S. has some 50,000 storage facilities, which is more than five times the number of Starbucks. Currently, there is 7.3 sq. ft. of self-storage space for every man, woman and child in the nation. It’s physically possible that every American could stand — all at the same time — under the total canopy of self storage roofing. (SSA, the Self Storage Association)
5. 3.1% of the world’s children live in America, but they own 40% of the toys consumed globally. (UCLA)
6. The average American woman owns 30 outfits, one for every day of the month. Back in 1930, that figure was just nine. (Forbes)
7. Americans spend more on shoes, jewelry and watches ($100 billion) than on higher education. (Psychology Today)
8. Shopping malls outnumber high schools. And 93% of teenage girls rank shopping as their favorite pastime. (Affluenza)
9. Over the course of our lifetime, we’ll spend a total of 3,680 hours (153 days) searching for misplaced items. The research found we lose up to nine items every day (that’s 198,743 in a lifetime). As you’d suspect, phones, keys, sunglasses and paperwork top the list. (The Daily Mail)
10. Americans spend $1.2 trillion annually on nonessential goods. (The Wall Street Journal) That’s some serious stuff!
Jack Guarnieri started servicing electromechanical pinball machines in 1975 and has been involved in every phase of the amusement game business since then. He was an operator in NYC, then began a distributorship in 1999, PinballSales.com, selling coin-op to the consumer market. In January of 2011, he founded Jersey Jack Pinball (named after his RePlay Magazine pen name), which builds award-winning, full-featured, coin-op pinball machines. Email Jack at [email protected].
