Huckleberries Online

High Noon: A Culture Of Storage

Posted by DFO

Dec. 15, 2009 12:12 p.m. • 7 comments

We traveled to Coeur d’Alene to do some business and Christmas shopping. As I predicted it was hideous, with that awful music being played everywhere and shoppers apparently oblivious to each other, shoving and pushing, grabbing and lining up like a bunch of idiots to buy mostly Chinese junk. I was struck again on the way by just how much storage has become big business in the U.S. There are huge storage facilities being built everywhere, as if there is no end to the demand. I guess everyone has to have a place to stash the junk they buy at Christmas. As I have observed previously, there is something very wrong with a culture that requires so much storage/Morialekafa. More here.

Question: Do you agree with Morialekafa of Boundary County that we all own too much junk?

Seven comments on this post so far. Add yours!

jazzyvandal on December 15 at 12:17 p.m.
Yes! Some people are worse than others. Just watch the show Hoarders!
Phaedrus on December 15 at 12:23 p.m.
I agree.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
Phaedrus on December 15 at 1:27 p.m.
As I predicted it was hideous, with that awful music being played everywhere

Sounds like Morialekafa came with a preconceived notion of the days events, no wonder it turned out that way for him.
Stickman on December 15 at 1:34 p.m.
I know people that own giant storage units and don’t even know what’s in them or rarely even go to see what’s there. We are consumed with ‘stuff’. Garages full, houses full, and of course storage units full of things we surely don’t need but have to have. George Carlin had a great skit about ‘stuff’, priceless.
Ravenlady on December 15 at 3:50 p.m.
Thanks Phaedrus for that George Carlin Utube. That is priceless. I always think of Carlin when I see storage units.

I just had to clean out an uncles four (4) storage units this summer after his death. Wow, spent months carting it to the dump. Really a shame. Couldn’t even give most of the “stuff” away.

This time of year when I walk through the stores, I think of the stuff that will be put away and not used. Too bad.
zelda on December 15 at 4:18 p.m.
Totally true. I marvel during the summer while driving around town. People have the doors up on their three-car garages. They’re literally packed to the rafters with junk and the vehicles are parked outside year-around.

People think it’s all worth storing but try to sell it at a garage sale and someone might offer you 10 cents.

Ravenlady has it right — you can’t give it away and it costs money to throw it away. This is deflation in action.

“The world is too much with us; late and soon.
Getting and spending, we lay waste our power.” — Wordsworth

I had to put my English degree to use somehow. Can’t sell it, so I’m giving away the poetry I memorized. Not as funny as Carlin, but priceless all the same.
kamm on December 16 at 12:19 a.m.
I ‘totally’ have too much stuff. I didn’t know how too much stuff I had until I started moving things during a remodel.

It started a conversation with my siblings and we’re using our houses as our Christmas stores this year.

Reduce…Reuse…Recycle… is my new mantra.

I thinks it’s because my parents were of the Depression Era.
Never throw anything away-‘we can use the parts later’
Stock up on everything- ‘while you have the cash’

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About this blog

D.F. Oliveria is a columnist and blogger for The Spokesman-Review. Huckleberries Online was judged the best 2008 Idaho newspaper blog by the Idaho Press Club. And the best 2007 news blog in the Pacific Northwest by the Society for Professional Journalist. Print Huckleberries is a past winner of the Herb Caen Memorial Column contest by the National Association of Newspaper Columnists. The Readership Institute of Northwestern University cited this blog as a good example of online community journalism.