It's because life moves faster now.

My wife started collecting fine tea sets ever since her mother-in-law asked her how she prepares tea. ("I'll show you how we prepare tea...") My wife does not drink tea. I do.

I say don't be a slave to possessions. Enjoy what you have, and what you inherit. If they become a burden, let someone else enjoy them. Life is too short to worry about things.

Time to make myself another cup.

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munificent 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> It's because life moves faster now.

In a little more detail, I think that previous generations were time-rich and stuff-poor. Objects were laborious to make so people had few of them but also more time on their hands. That meant it was reasonable to obligate someone to spend a little time keeping and maintaining an object even if you weren't likely to use it often.

But now thanks to automation, globalization, and other stuff, physical objects are cheap. And thanks to an infinite number of media services who want to vacuum up every moment of our attention, time is costly. So objects come and go in our lives because it's not worth spending any time holding on to a thing you could just buy again when you need it later.

While I certainly take advantage of the convenience of cheap stuff, I don't think our current situation is really healthier.

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panzagl 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Also, just use the stuff- anything besides silver has almost no resale value so you might as well use it, put it in the dishwasher, use them as skeet, whatever.

	▲	Ekaros 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		And what has value changes. Unless it is something really special or rare, trends do change over time. And this applies to everything.
	▲	ghaff 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Yeah. I have my parents' wedding china which I don't use on a daily basis. (Would rather use stoneware than china.) But had a bunch of people over, I was like, heck I have this whole cabinet full of dishes. Why not use them?

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foobarian 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think we evolved to hoard stuff while stuff was really hard to come by. But the industrial evolution and especially last century messed up all of that by throwing a glut of near free objects at us and many of us are just not that good at dealing with it.

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cjs_ac 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

My grandfather had a hoarding tendency as a consequence of growing up in the Great Depression. As a response to this, my father has a tendency to be too eager to throw things away. As a response to this, I have a hoarding tendency.

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fn-mote 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

> too eager to throw things away

Curious about this. Does it mean he is throwing away things with sentimental value?

Just wanted to probe the idea of a self-proclaimed hoarder evaluating someone else’s tendency as “too eager”… by asking how you know.

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pjc50 2 days ago | parent [-]

My own family moved a couple of notches on the hoarder/junker scale after a few incidents of discovering that a document had been thrown away that turned out to be important.

	▲	ghaff 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		There's no hard line. But there are some types of documents I've tossed in the fire box and other documents I put in a pile and figure after a year or two they probably don't matter.

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_dain_ 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Sounds like the anorexia-bulimia axis but for possessions instead of food

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adrianmonk 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I attribute some of it to the Great Depression. My grandparents grew up during it, and it had an effect on them. They never wanted to get rid of anything because what if times got really hard again? You might be so poor that you couldn't reacquire what you got rid of.

They lived a comfortable middle class life, and that fear never materialized. But they were still prepared in case it did. And they passed that kind of thinking on to the next generation.

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tasuki 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> ("I'll show you how we prepare tea...") My wife does not drink tea. I do.

I try not to collect things. But I noticed I have an increasing number of gaiwans. Somehow, I always find an excuse to acquire another one...

(Them gaiwans are of the "I won't be too sad if the kid breaks one" variety. Props to the kid for not having broken any yet, despite regularly enjoying a variety of oolongs/pu-erhs/greens...)