I stumbled across some interesting stuff about, well, Stuff recently while I was working on a project.
It seems that Stuff can be a key barrier to making decisions and taking action. Having too much Stuff literally overwhelms our ability to make logical, considered decisions. House full of decades of clutter? Moving house becomes a much bigger deal. Wardrobe bursting at the seams? Choosing an outfit for work gets complicated.
It seems that only by organising and streamlining our Stuff can we start to organise and simplify our own lives. Of course, there is a huge industry out there offering storage solutions but this I’m not talking about having places to put Stuff, it’s more about deciding what to do with it all.
Ebay, car boot sales and freecycle have all done their bit over the last decade to help clear out domestic clutter, but it seems to me that there must be a lot of households buying more Stuff they don’t need because they actually already own something similar. We had a mini clear out at home last year (only two draws and a couple of cupboards) and unearthed five staplers and 13,000 staples.
I would like to point out that this is NOT my house
From an environmental impact point of view, obviously buying less new Stuff is A Good Thing, but from a marketing point of view, we obviously have clients with their own Stuff they’d like help shifting more of. I think perhaps we need to find a way of diverting communications resources to finding new homes or new uses for unwanted Stuff, so that we can give people the head space to decide what they really need or want.
Trendwatchers have been talking about Simplifiers for a couple of years, who are looking to collect new experiences rather than more Stuff. I think there are a lot more potential Simplifiers out there who might need a helping hand on the path to simplicity.
I’m glad that is not your house. :) Simplifiers represent an interesting challenge for marketers. We need to find experiences that will appeal to them and which relate to brands. The trend of simplifying relates to the trends of crafts making, home canning and food foraging.
@clweinfeld
I think the idea that people are searching to collect new experiences is extremely future forward. If you look at how we no longer buy CDs and DVDs, and our books are increasingly read on a Kindle, you can imagine that in years to come more of our ‘stuff’ will be simplified – the challenge for marketers then being how to make the experience of what they offer as essential to our collection as the cassette copy of Michael Jackson’s Thriller was to teenagers in 80s. I’m interested to see what happens…