Americans drowning in stuff

One of the reasons people cite most often for moving is a desire for more storage space – not more living space, but more storage space.

Because, boy, do we have a lot of stuff.

Three researchers at UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives spent four years studying 32 middle-class Los Angeles families and determined that "stuff" is a key ingredient in modern life – and sometimes adds to life's stress.

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Their new book, "Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century: 32 Families Open Their Doors," includes photos of all the paraphernalia that makes up modern family life, including refrigerators covered with magnets and memorabilia.

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As Elizabeth Kolbert writes in The New Yorker, in an article focusing on America's spoiled children:

"After a few short years," the text notes, many families amass more objects "than their houses can hold." The result is garages given over to old furniture and unused sports equipment, home offices given over to boxes of stuff that haven’t yet been stuck in the garage, and, in one particularly jam-packed house, a shower stall given over to storing dirty laundry.

The reasons for amassing all that clutter vary, from parents' desire to compensate for time away from their children to the pressure of consumer culture to the fact that people like to collect things.

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"The American workplace is intense and demanding; when we come home, we want material rewards, like people all around the globe," anthropologist Elinor Ochs, one of the book's co-authors, told UCLA Magazine.

"What distinguishes us is the normative expectation of hyperconsumerism," she said. "American middle-class houses, especially in Los Angeles, are capacious; refrigerators are larger than elsewhere on the planet. Even so, we find food, toys and other purchases exceeding the confines of the home and overflowing into garages, piled up to the rafters with stockpiled extra 'stuff.'"

Adding another child to the family produces a 30% increase in the amount of stuff before the child reaches kindergarten, the authors report.

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"Many of the kids’ rooms pictured are so crowded with clothes and toys, so many of which have been tossed on the floor, that there is no path to the bed," The New York Times writes, mentioning one child's room that contained 248 dolls.

The authors also counted objects on refrigerators, which averaged 55 and hit a maximum of 166 at one home, though they did not draw any conclusions from the refrigerator clutter. Perhaps the ability to banish all that clutter accounts for the popularity of stainless steel, which does not accommodate magnets.

Does all this stuff make its owners happy? It depends.

Fathers and older children generally were proud of their things, the authors reported. But mothers reported substantial stress.

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"It's difficult to find time to sort, organize and manage these possessions," Anthony P. Graesch, another co-author, told UCLA Magazine. "Thus, our excess becomes a visible sign of unaccomplished work that constantly challenges our deeply ingrained notions of tidy homes and elicits substantial stress."

Confess. How much stuff do you have in your home? Does it make you happy or does it stress you out?