Collecting many items was a good thing in the past of humankind but nowadays it is an inefficient strategy. Let us explain.
An average person owns thousands of individual items, most of them in their home. Some items are used daily, like your favorite shoes or your keys and wallet. Some items are just rushing through your life: The banana you eat on the next day you have purchased it or that newspaper you have barely read. It will be thrown away within days. But then there are still many things in your apartment jut sitting there. Hidden in a drawer or put aside for later. Those things we want to focus on, why do we keep them?
Collecting seems to be deeply embedded in the human mind. Small children start collecting random items at a very young age. And it makes sense. Throughout history the cost of keeping something was always comparably low, however the cost of repurchasing that same item down the road was often very costly or even practically impossible. To minimize regret it was a good strategy to keep everything.
Digitization helps us in two ways:
To (re-)gain possession of an item was never as easy, fast and cheap as today. Think about that specific tool for your skateboard or that weird looking light bulb you don’t even have a fitting lamb to. If you really need this specific item in the future it is extremely easy to purchase it from the internet and have it in your hand within days or even hours. Sources like Amazon, classified ads and the hundred specialized e-commerce dealer’s hold a universe of items at our disposal.
To get rid of stuff was never as easy and worthwhile as before. All the digital channels you can use to resell things reduce the effort and increase the revenue you get from letting go of an item. Websites like Momox, Ebay, Quoka enable you to sell to just the right person within minutes. This wasn't available in the past.
If you take the thought from above to an extreme, you migth end up with a lifestyle like Cédric Waldburger who chooses to live with an extreme minimal set of items. Chheck the video below.
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