How Much Stuff is Too Much?

I recently read this quote in Country Home Ideas magazine:

In the early 20th century, when Californian bungalows were in their heyday, the average family was said to own roughly 120 things.  By contrast, today's average adolescent has up to 10,000.

This got me thinking - how much is too much stuff?




When we moved to London three years ago, we sent a 20 foot container to London, another 20 foot container to storage and I probably sold/gave away nearly another container load.  That's ridiculous!

When I was a child growing up in Melbourne, we lived in small inner-city terrace houses.  There were no built in wardrobes or storage.  We didn't own much.  I was reminded of this need for paring back when we lived in our London terrace.  There just isn't room to hoard.  No buying bulk laundry powder as the entire laundry was in a cupboard.

How much stuff do you own?  When is it enough?  Do we really need it all?

On the weekend I went through my son's bedroom and the 'junk' we store in the guest bedroom wardrobe and managed to find two bags of things that could go to the op shop (charity store).  I'm sure there's more 'stuff' lurking around.  I'm off to go through some more cupboards!  De-cluttering is definately theraputic.