Is your garage, attic, or basement crowded with stuff you’re not even sure how you got or why you still have it? Whether we want to admit it or not, this is true for a lot of us, and a new survey looks into how much junk people have accumulated over the years and what kind of collections they’re holding onto.
According to the poll of 2-thousand American adults, about a third (34%) of their stuff is non-functional, or things they don’t need or use often.
- They estimate that 13% of their non-essentials are pure junk, 21% is stuff they don’t need anymore but haven’t gotten rid of yet, 27% is sentimental keepsakes, 10% is stuff that belongs to other people and 29% is collections or things that spark joy.
- Nearly half (47%) of respondents aren’t even really sure how they accumulated all of it and 27% are embarrassed by how much junk they own.
- Some don’t even have room for all of it, as 20% are currently renting a storage unit and 10% are still storing stuff at their parents’ home.
- More than half (56%) of those surveyed are planning to declutter this spring, with the average person hoping to get rid of around a third of their stuff.
- It’s a huge task, as respondents estimate it would take 14 hours to sort and get rid of all their unwanted junk, but 17% think it would take an entire work week - 40 hours - to go through.
- The average person would pay over $13-hundred to have all their clutter magically disappear.
- Of course, they don’t want to part with everything, certainly not their collections.
- One respondent has collected more than 300 coasters from breweries they’ve visited, another has amassed more than 200 oil-burning lamps, while others have collections of gnomes, uranium glass, vintage handkerchiefs, 100-thousand sports cards, and memorabilia honoring Elvis and Princess Diana.
- But they get weirder. Some of the more bizarre collections include one person’s fingernail clippings saved from their entire lifetime, pastel toilets, a set of mummies and taxidermy displays of everything from tigers to pufferfish to penguins.
Source: Talker
Scott's Thoughts:
- How much space do you think a lifetime’s worth of fingernail clippings takes up?
- If you haven't touched it, looked at it or used it in 3 years, it should go.
- If a collection is worth money, that is different. It is like an investment.