NEW YORK - "We start from the closets of clothes, after all we always too many. Reduce your wardrobe is the first cathartic gesture, and gives you strength to continue with the rest of the house. Discard time, we vaccinate against the temptation to buy even more than before. After a few months as well as your consumer habits begin to change." They are the practical advice of the manual "The challenge of 100 things," the Bible of a new movement. The author Dave Bruno of San Diego, California, is adored by her fans on Facebook and has followers in the United States. Whole families participate in what is called a "new arithmetic of Life", or "minimum addition, maximum abduction." Getting rid of all unnecessary, and resist the temptation of impulse buying new, dictated by the Pavlovian reflex that triggers in us the next advertisements or emulation.
Learning to live with 100 things, in fact, not one more. "In reality, that number can not be seen as a fetish," says Bruno, who is open to compromise and mediation, "but it helps to focus, to keep an eye on the ultimate goal." Or the multiple objectives. Because the movement of the "hundred things" in America like the environmentalists, of course, but also collects consent of those very different.
It has an economic function: America wants to learn to live within the limits of their income, caring for the temptation to borrow. It has a psychological dimension, the release from stress, and not coincidentally located in parallel of the professional "life-coach", he or she trains you for life, a kind of psychotherapist of daily choices.
Finally there is an educational choice: we must prepare children and grandchildren to live peacefully with fewer things, because these will be the first generations of Westerners forced to downsize from their parents. And with so many different reasons, an army of American households will recognize the new definition of "personal downsizers." The "downsizing" was synonymous with the fierce corporate restructuring, mass layoffs to make more profits, and the end result producing manufacturing industries increasingly scaled down.
Now the "downsizing" will adopt this new type of consumer. The Washington Post tells a day in the family home Swindlehurst, in Minneapolis, which begins with the great act of catharsis, empty cupboards, attics, closets, basements and garages. It looks like the rediscovery of an ancient tradition, the yard-sale, sale on the sidewalk of the house of objects too, which American families have always done to empty the superfluous at weddings, removals, funerals.
But now is different, the big clean up is not a precondition for returning to the assault of hypermarkets. A study by the MetLife insurance company reveals that 40% of the "millennium generation" (Americans born between the eighties and early nineties) is believed to already have everything you need: there were only 28% in 2008, at the dawn of the Great Depression .
The percentage of those who feel under pressure to "buy more" fell from 66 to 47% during the recession. It is not an exclusively generational. 77% of Americans of all ages is convinced that to improve the quality of life today, relations with other human beings are more important than material wealth.
Sean Gosiewski, director of the Alliance for Sustainability, welcomed this change of values: "We expect that in twenty years we will all scale down our expectations of consumption and adopt lifestyles easier, you might as well start now and in the right spirit." For example, using the first few days of rest of 2011 to reunite the family and draw up a list of "a hundred things that we really can not do without." A fun game, ensure the fan of the movement, and that helps us to discover much about ourselves.
In addition to free up space, precious square feet, occupied by layers of unnecessary items may already have at the time of first purchase.
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