Remember that sanctimonious old saw, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without?” It may have been clever in its day, but it’s got a certain killjoy ring to it.

Maybe until now. As an uncertain economic future looms ahead – Social Security goes into the red in 2016, the budget deficit ballooned past the $11 trillion mark this year, and we can’t yet see the bottom of the recession-depression-making do doesn’t seem so old school anymore. Frugality may be the new economics—and the new environmentalism, too.

In spite of economic fears, most of us suffer not from too little, but too much stuff: clothing, shoes, furniture, tools, toys, all the other marks of American consumption. Still, we keep acquiring more, usually more than we need. It’s a burden on the environment and, in many cases, our psychological and emotional health and well-being.

The truth about stuff
The psychic burden of stuff can be huge. “People become immobilized by too much stuff,” says Amy Crouch, a feng shui practitioner in Arvada. “It drains your energy. When you lighten up your space, you mentally and physically make room for good things to happen in your life.” Says Anne Peters, director of Gracestone, Inc., a consulting business specializing in waste reduction and resource management, “Through a spiritual lens, you’ll never meet your inner, non-material needs through material purchases.” Peters is also a minister in the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness, and she points out that “greed” and “sloth” are both deadly sins – along with their close cousin, gluttony.

Think about the price we pay every day in terms of minor irritation: not being able to put our hands on the things we need, choking on dust that accumulates on top of our piles, and living with the sense of being totally out of control. It’s hard to be who you want to be if you’re always dealing with stuff.

Eric Lombardi, executive director of Boulder’s Eco-Cycle won’t weigh in on the spiritual merits of stuff, but he is clear about the effect of stuff on the environment. There are three major causes of global warming: tail pipes, smokestacks, and what Lombardi calls “the wasteful society” (see stoptrashingtheclimate.org).

Waste contributes to climate change in many ways, says Lombardi; one of these is through the anaerobic decay of organic materials such as wood, food scraps, and especially yard waste in landfills. That process produces methane, which is 25 to 72 times worse than CO2 as a greenhouse gas, depending on whose estimate is used.
The fastest, cheapest, short-term strategy for lowering our climate impact is not to ban tail pipes and smokestacks, but rather to become a zero waste society, where all our “disposables” are the inputs for the next level of manufacturing. Zero waste is a lot easier to achieve when there’s really low consumption to begin with.

The environmental costs of stuff extend beyond landfills. In a 20-minute animated video, “The Story of Stuff,” (storyofstuff.org), producer Annie Leonard illustrates how the model of “extraction-production-distribution-consumption –disposal” in producing stuff harms the planet. We start by extracting natural resources (primarily from other countries where we can leave a mess behind), then processing them into objects (using lots of energy and possibly hazardous chemicals to do it), shipping them (sometimes across the globe a couple of times), and selling them.

We have that glorious moment of consumption, and soon enough things become “stuff,” and then stuff becomes waste. Americans make 4.5 pounds of garbage per person per day, says Leonard, and that’s not counting all the waste involved in the extraction, production, distribution, and selling of stuff.

How do we get a grip on our stuff? We start by looking at the “getting” of stuff – and then the “getting rid” of it.

Getting stuff
We do have alternatives. One is borrowing stuff, which has the added benefit of keeping the house from getting filled up. Libraries loan CDs, DVDs, books, and magazines. Rental firms carry everything from backhoes to barbeques. “Car sharing” is growing in popularity, with co-ops in the Denver metro area and Aspen. Churches may set up lending arrangements for durable medical equipment such as wheelchairs, crutches, and commodes.

If you need to keep your hands on the stuff longer, pre-owned gear is another option. Clothing, shoes, furniture, toys and other goods from second-hand stores have the added benefit of being much cheaper than new goods. Even towns as small as Ridgway and Rifle have second hand stores, and eBay and craigslist.org make buying used even easier.

Rachel Emmer, of Evergreen, has made a commitment to simply stop buying new. A couple of years ago, she came across the “Compact,” a very loose movement of people who commit to not buy new things for a year (sfcompact.blogspot.com). “That was something that I could do,” said Emmer. “The one-year time frame gave me an out, and it addressed my questioning of our consumer-driven culture.” She’s now well past the first year, and says the experience tested her mettle. “At first I did have to consciously think ‘Okay, I have this perceived need; what do I have already in my world that can fulfill that?’ I started getting creative.”

Laura Pritchett, of Fort Collins, supplies her family’s material needs without buying; she dumpster dives instead. She’s now written about it in Going Green: True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Divers (University of Oklahoma Press, 2009). While she has a very satisfactory family income, she says, “I prefer to live below our means so we can save for things that matter, such as education and health care. I feel privileged in that I’m not doing it for economic survival.”

She has fun while she’s at it, too. In her essay from the book, entitled “It Keeps the Heart Happy,” she describes a typical diving junket with her friend Tim: “Someone is clearly moving out today, and here come the trappings of an entire household. A huge ceramic piggybank! An oil-color painting in an oak frame! An iron skillet, bowling shoes, a box of jewelry, a tent! We giggle and scan the horizon for cops. Life is tremendous.”

Since she’s working hard to rescue material from the landfills, you might think that she’d have a house full of rescued stuff, but in fact she keeps a very spare esthetic. She also understands the hidden price of storing stuff. It costs at least $100 per square foot to build a house; do we want to put that much into storing “somebody might want it someday” stuff?

Getting rid of stuff
Once you’ve sworn off buying new to some extent, there’s that scary second half of the equation: getting rid of stuff. We’re attached to our possessions, and it’s hard to give them up. But even a die-hard collector can learn to lighten up. Once you’ve made the decision to divest, you’ll have many ways to do so. Here are some of the best:

• Give it away in one great big donation. Goodwill, the Salvation Army and many other organizations stand ready and willing to come to your home and cart off your cast-offs. This is often the best service for passing on your used furniture and larger possessions, since they’ll pull up in a giant truck and whisk it all away.

• Dole it out to organizations that can directly get it into the hands of people who will use it, such as social service agencies.

• Take it to a community garage sale. In Nederland, the Mountain Forum for Peace does a yearly garage sale—this year, it’s July 24 to 26 – that prompts the whole community to clean out their basements.

• Leave things on the sidewalk with a “Free” sign; the legality of this option is open to interpretation, but it’s a common practice nonetheless.

• Try “freecycling,” an internet-based concept that claims to be “changing the world one gift at a time,” while promoting generosity and community, too (freecycle.org). Freecycling is always about giving, never about selling or bartering. Says MacKenzie Pidgeon of the Colorado Springs Freecycle group, “When I give my stuff to others, I look very carefully at what they write me. I want thoughtful kind people who truly could use the stuff.”

Selling stuff
For some, a garage full of potentially salable stuff can be mined for money. Choose a day, set the stuff out, and get a cash box and some change ready for a sale.
eBay, craigslist, and other internet intermediaries have dramatically changed the resale market. Anyone, anywhere can snap a picture, post an ad, make a deal, and get their stuff shipped off at the post office. These options have created a market for that old copy of Lassie from fifth grade and that waffle maker you never bothered to unbox.

Antiques or other higher quality household items can be sold through antique dealers or at auction, netting a higher price than at a yard sale. These days, sending a photo of your goods to the dealer may save you a trip.
As you consider selling, do take your time into account. Whether it’s worth your time to sell depends on how much time you have, and how valuable your stuff is.

If you can’t part with it...
If you’re suffering from a “disorder disorder” (an informal term) and don’t know where to start on a clearing out project, there are plenty of professionals available to help. First, try a professional organizer.

Lynn Owen, president of the Colorado chapter of the National Association of Professional Organizers (napocolorado.org), says there’s sort of a stigma about calling for help. “People feel they should be able to clear things up for themselves, and the reality is that everyone is capable of doing it,” says Owen. “But for the same reason that you have the oil changed or call someone to come over to fire up the sprinkler system, you can hire a professional organizer: it’s letting people do what they do well.”

Professionals are likely to suggest sorting your stuff into four categories: trash, recyclable, donation-worthy (or sale-worthy, if you are so inclined), and stuff to keep in a clear, manageable system.

Feng shui consultants can help, too. While feng shui encompasses much more than dealing with stuff, often the first goal is to help clients pare down their belongings. Crouch, who was a professional organizer before adding feng shui to her practice, says that clients can “think about their furniture and stuff as rock, and the space around it as water that flows. It’s healthy to have it flow smoothly; it’s in direct correlation to your health and everything else in life.”

If a professional organizer or a feng shui consultant isn’t right for you, try getting help from a therapist or psychiatrist. Hoarding behaviors may be a part of obsessive-compulsive personalities. Sometimes pharmaceuticals can help (SSRIs are most common), especially when combined with talk therapy. Dr. Bob Cowan, a psychiatrist in Centennial, says, “I’m not worried about what a snapshot of your place looks like; I want to get you to where you are comfortable with your home.” He compares issues with stuff to issues with excess weight; if underlying anxieties are dealt with, weight reduction – or stuff reduction – may follow.

The modern day equivalent of “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” is probably “Reduce-reuse-recycle.” Personal finance advisers, spiritual advisers, and advocates for the earth all love the concept. Better yet, they seem to agree that of the three, “reduce” is the greatest of all. If enough people hear, and heed, this slogan, perhaps a day of inconspicuous consumption may be at hand.

CASE STUDY:
Uintah Shabazz, Longmont

Living outside the box
If you don’t keep a home at all, there’s not much danger of collecting too much stuff. Uintah Shabazz of Longmont, a community health nurse, has taken this tack. When she had children in the home, she kept a standard, middle-class household for their benefit. Now that the nest is empty, she’s happy being voluntarily homeless. She can work less and travel more, often to Africa where she has spent several long stints as a volunteer health worker. Currently, she lives in the basement of her son’s house, but she sometimes camps or house-sits.

Shabazz says she comes from a family of hoarders and sees those tendencies in herself and others in the clan. She says being homeless “has been a real pleasure for me.” Sure, she had accumulated artwork and other beautiful objects as life went along. “They’re treasures, things that are really special to me,” she says. “Now that I don’t have a home anymore, I’ve given them away to friends across the country. I don’t keep track of it anymore, but when I visit friends, it’s so fun to see these things. My home is spread out over this big community stretched from coast to coast.” Now that’s creating a new paradigm!

CASE STUDY:
Hulyer family, Boulder

Less is more for this family
John Huyler and his family made a conscious decision to move from a 4000-square-foot single-family home in Boulder to a cohousing unit of 1540-square-feet this year. The motivation: living a little lighter on the earth, although the reduced costs were an added benefit. Since stuff, like a gas, expands to fill the space available, they had lots and lots of it.

How to get rid of 70 percent of it? They planned for the move as if they were going to Europe for a year: what would they take? Huyler remembers this as a shift in focus. Instead of having to decide what stuff to get rid of, he found himself choosing what stuff to live with. A tiny example: coffee mugs. He, his wife DeAnne Butterfield, and their daughter, Jesse Huyler, each chose four they liked, supplying them with an even dozen. The rest went in the give-away pile.

Books had to go, too – 23 boxes of them. Huyler decided to keep just three kinds: poetry (he reads some every day), one book about each place he has traveled, and books written by people he personally knows.

Huyler says the experience of right-sizing was “liberating, conscious and fun.” And in a sense, it was a gift to Jesse. “I realized that there are just two choices,” he says. “Either we deal with this stuff or our heirs have to.”