The decluttering industry can rejoice: Americans have enough stuff for the self-storage industry to have seven square feet for each American. I’ve always wondered about the relationship between bigger homes and more stuff. Which comes first: having more stuff leads to a bigger house or having bigger houses leads acquiring more to fill them? I suspect the two are mutually reinforcing. Americans generally have quite a few things, even poorer Americans, thanks to general prosperity and a consumer-oriented society which kicked into high gear starting in the early 1900s. As a kid, I liked looking repeatedly at the book Material World which had families around the globe pose for a picture in front of their house with all of the stuff from their house piled around them. The average American family had quite a bit while many around the globe had very little.

This bit of data would bolster the arguments of some who suggest big homes are just a symptom of a larger problem: a society that likes consuming things.