Why You Need Less Stuff Than You Think to Be Happy

Photo by Domenico Loia on Unsplash

“When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, ‘Oh yes — I already have everything that I really need.’”

— Dalai Lama

It feels like nobody can go a day anymore without thinking of something they think they need to buy. We’re all one kitchen gadget away from happiness, it seems. It has the quality of an addiction; we exhaust ourselves spending day after day shopping, always convinced the next purchase will be the one that makes us happy and yet never satisfied.

Generations of marketers incentivized by no-holds-barred capitalism have succeeded in convincing us that we need way more than we think we need to be happy. In 2020, 54% of Americans felt overwhelmed by clutter in their home. In 2021, 38% of Americans had a self-storage unit. And in 2022, 36% of garage-owning Americans could not park in their garage. Any country where one-third to one-half of the population can feel overwhelmed by owning too much stuff is a wealthy country indeed.

They have convinced us we need so much stuff that I would wager even most minimalists have…