Acquisition of things is baked into the human condition regardless of financial status. Unless you're truly nomadic it's easy to accumulate a lot of stuff. Small houses can be crammed full of things that accumulate in a way that is astonishing. "It might be useful one day" or "I can fix this" - reasons for keeping things. We used to say our parents were a product of the Depression, where they learned to not throw anything away; perhaps that is part of the impetus for the last 100 years. Podcast of Colwell interview on KERA, Jan. 3, 2024.

A friend from the 1980s fell and hurt her back badly enough that she had to take early retirement (Social Security). That was her sole income. Her home was paid for but her son-in-law never finished a repair in her kitchen so the only running water in the house was in the bathroom. To that add every magazine, book, mailer, anything that entered the house and never left. And predators who conned her into donations . . . anyway, there are a lot of places where the accumulation is part of mental illness. Twice her daughter and I helped clear things out, it just went back to what it looked like before.

But the case you make for the easy purchase of fast fashion by a large segment of the US population is made worse by their propensity for tossing anything they don't want or can't return into the trash. The resources that are piled up at the dump are scandalous. I've remarked frequently in recent years that adding Civics classes back into high school classes is needed, but perhaps classes like Home Economics might have a revised curriculum in order to pivot and address some of these issues. I have a couple of books by Adam Minter about thrifting and the second-hand economy I probably bought after interviews on my local NPR station. They've moved to the front of the "to read" list.

Along with things, a tremendous amount of food is thrown out, not composted. I read recently about the invention of a spice-embedded paper that can be used with fresh produce to help keep it fresh longer. Smithsonian article. I fear it's simply a thing to use in an overstuffed fridge to keep food that we've forgotten about fresher longer before it gets tossed. I can see industrial and commercial use of it.

Meanwhile, the kitchen got some more reorganization. The cupboard with a number of pyrex bowls with plastic lids I'm using those more now was difficult to navigate. I've moved out a couple of things that I rarely use and made access to all of it much easier.