Have you noticed that Americans (maybe all Westerners) have too much stuff?

I called a girlfriend today whose husband got transferred last week. One day's notice. So he's up north and she's down south trying to get their house in order to sell. She has decided that as a single parent with three kids in extracurricular activities that she cannot afford the time for a garage sale. So she is getting stuff together and every time someone calls and says “We're going to have a truck in your area” she says “sure, come get my stuff.”

Now I know that in December I took three carloads of stuff to Goodwill type places. Three carloads. But a lot of the stuff was from my mom's attic. (With the new prices still attached.) However, I took one carload just after Christmas that was all mine. Then January 3 I took another carload. And as soon as I got back from that I started another pile. Part of my stuff is I'm getting too small for my clothes and my boys are growing out of theirs faster than they wear them out. (Which is amazing, because one is just the size less than the other so they both wear the clothes before they're outgrown.)

My girlfriend is trying to get rid of all the stuff it's not worth it to her to move.

I'm just trying to de-clutter my house. People give us stuff, which I am glad of, but then we don't need it or use it and I hate it just sitting there. So, it's off to somewhere to give it away again.

But if I can go with a trunk load of stuff that often, doesn't that say that we have way more stuff than anyone needs? And there are people with more things than we have.

Then there are the people who clean out all the time. An acquaintance says that each time her kids get a new toy they have to get rid of an equal number of old ones. So, come their birthdays if they get twenty new toys, they have to get rid of twenty old ones. I wonder if she lets them junk the new ones they don't like? They don't throw them away. They take them to Goodwill etc.