One reason for moving from my house to a studio apartment is to simplify life: live with less. But living on the light side is counter-cultural if not downright unpatriotic. After all, the “Consumer Confidence Index” — meaning our willingness to buy — is vital to the nation’s economic well-being. We Americans cooperate. We’re apparently more eager to buy than to vote.

The late comedian George Carlin, in a now-classic standup routine, summarized Americans’ obsession with acquisition in one word: “stuff.” The “whole meaning of life,” Carlin claims in oft-viewed videos, is “finding a place for your stuff.” That may be true until you reach a certain age. Then the meaning of life revolves around letting go of your stuff.

It’s painful, but it can be profitable. If you hold a yard or garage sale, you’re part of a grassroots market that puts an estimated $1.5 to $2 billion into American pockets annually. That’s a guesstimate by encyclopedia.com. The 6.5 to 9 million garage/yard sales held throughout the year are largely unofficial, unreported — and untaxed.

You can always let stuff go without letting go, but it’ll cost. Some ten percent of Americans pay an average upwards of $100 monthly to hang on to whatever. The booming storage rental industry makes $38 billion a year, including $65 million from auctioning off contents of units when renters forget to pay the rent, run out of money, no longer care, die, or whatever. 

If you try to salve your letting-go wounds by recycling, sorry, but it may not be all that effective. A  recent study, “America’s Broken Recycling System,” concludes that less than a third of the items left at recycling centers actually do get recycled or composted. Nonetheless, the recycling and/or landfill industry ballooned from $82 billion in 2021 to $91 billion last year. (Those figures are national and do not reflect the efficiency of local recycling efforts.)

I opted for a three-day moving sale, held on a sunny weekend, made entirely possible by volunteer workers from the Okanogan Valley Orchestra and Chorus, which got half the proceeds. Thanks to them, it was a heap of fun. In a rural community where everybody knows everybody, shoppers learned even more about me — A to Z — from my taste in Art to Zippered storage bags. I celebrated with grinning shoppers who strolled out with a new-to-them treasure that I had long treasured. “What a steal,” they were thinking. “For both of us,” I was thinking.

Alternative D — donating — satisfies the soul, especially if it’s really good stuff. I dreaded the thought of selling my car online, so I donated it to public radio. They’ll pick up your car at your door and give you a tax write-off.

I like to believe that I have winnowed my possessions so I no longer have mere “stuff,” but a higher class of items: “things.” It required only a pickup truck pulling a twelve-foot trailer to haul my “things” to my new apartment in Seattle. Carefully labeled boxes are stacked in a corner, leaving just enough space for bed and chairs. Uh, but I sold those.

Right. Gotta go shopping.