Tag Archives: Target

Clutter and Different Generations: Today’s Young Adults

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Simpler Living Tagged , , , , , , , , ,

Today’s young adult generation seems to have far less clutter than their parents or grandparents have (or had). I think there are a couple of reasons for this.

First off, they’re not faced with the level of temptation that my generation was when it comes to buying things. Many of today’s young people have no experience of wearing well-made clothes. They’ve grown up with poorly made clothes, cut from skimpy cloth. They see clothing as almost disposable. My children buy cheap clothes for their children because they’re readily available, and cheap in price as well as in quality. They’re too busy to search for high-quality clothes for their kids, and they can’t really afford designer kiddie clothes.

As for furniture, they’d just as soon buy a few cheap pieces from Target or IKEA and be done with it until it breaks. They have no interest in the solid oak furniture we have. Just the other day, I saw a 1980s entertainment center on the front lawn of an apartment building with a “Free” sign on it. It had stained glass windows and was made of oak; I remember when those were popular, and I’d guess the original owner paid several hundred dollars, maybe even a thousand, for it. But today, no one wants it.

Second, malls are dying, and even free-standing stores are disappearing. Everyone blames online shopping, and there’s no doubt that it has made a big dent. But I think the loss of the enjoyable shopping experience also bears some blame, and then there’s a third factor: these days, many adults are literally addicted to their smartphones. They don’t have time to go shopping, and they don’t see the need to spend money on lots of store purchases besides food and personal items.

If they need anything, they can buy it online, but they prefer to spend their money on experiences that they can document on social media. They’re too busy taking photos of their latest restaurant meal or vacation experience to go shopping. As a result, they don’t collect anywhere near as much “stuff” as their parents or grandparents did.

In addition, many of them can’t afford a house because of the huge disparity between housing costs and income in many places. Previous generations were able to afford a house when they were fairly young, giving them that much more time to fill up every nook and cranny. But many of today’s young adults live in condos or apartments; some still live with their parents. Also, quite a few of them have to move frequently for their careers, so they don’t want a lot of stuff weighing them down.

For those reasons, most of them probably won’t have the problems with clutter than many of their elders have. That’s wonderful, but that also makes it more likely that they will be completely mystified by our huge collections of stuff. And if we don’t go through it all and get rid of what we no longer need before we die, they’re not going to be very happy to do it for us after we’re gone.

Giving Up Your Furniture When You Downsize

By Claire Posted in downsizing, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , , , , , , , ,

What do you do with your furniture when you downsize your life?

Most likely you’re moving to smaller quarters and you just can’t fit all of your furniture into it. So you’ll have to make some decisions.

We moved from a 5-bedroom two-story house to a 3-bedroom ranch when we downsized. As a result, we gave up a lot of furniture, something you may also have to do.

The downside of this is that you won’t get much for your furniture, even if it’s very high quality, solid wood, leather, etc. Most of today’s young people would rather spend $600 on an iPhone than on a solid oak end table, so the demand for high-quality furniture is not what it once was. But it’s not dead, either, so you should be able to sell your unneeded furniture, though you probably won’t get what you think it’s worth.

We were in the middle of moving, so we wanted to get rid of things quickly. We put a sofa sleeper on Craig’s List for a few hundred dollars, and it sold fast. We put a loveseat that had seen better days on the curb and a neighbor snatched it up within a few hours. We also had a sale at our storage unit where we sold our kitchen table and chairs, a few dressers and some other pieces of furniture.

We didn’t make a fortune on our old furniture, but we got it out of our way quickly, which was our primary goal.

The upside to today’s listless furniture market is that you can find some really nice pieces for reasonable prices that will be better suited to your new (smaller) home. After we downsized, we did buy a few new pieces, because we needed smaller-scale furniture.

Our best purchase was a leather loveseat, built like a tank and in pretty good shape, bought from someone who was also downsizing and didn’t want to take it on their cross-country move. It cost us a whopping $200 and fits perfectly in our modestly sized living room, where a sofa would be too large.

The person we bought it from moved to the other side of the country after selling all her furniture, then outfitted her new smaller home with quality wood and leather pieces as well as appliances that she found on Craig’s List. She said it was well worth the money she paid to rent a small truck to carry the larger pieces to her new home.

Of course there’s always IKEA, Big Lots and Target if you prefer cheap, trendy furniture. But if you like quality pieces, a little legwork can get you well-made furniture at a very reasonable cost in just the right scale for your new home.