The thing is, there is also a certain amount of "running on the mouse wheel" here. Surveys show that while incomes (and consumption) have climbed dramatically since the second world war, happiness has not risen significantly in industrial countries.

I suspect that "clutter" is a case where people could gear down and be happier, even with a little less mass production and mass consumption.

(Clutter is more likely made overseas these days anyway. We spend locally on gas-food-lodging ... things that do not clutter.)

I am sure Al Gore will pick up on this soon.

The industry totally plays this need. I was shocked on my Great Drive North (California to Alaska) to see storage units all along the way, even in remote areas of the Northwest Territories.

I have heard that there are enough storage units in America to provide standing room for every man, woman, and child, in the country.

... and of course, the vast majority of users end up playing many times the replacement value of their contents for the rent to store them.

Kim, on the other hand, has worked for the same company for ten years and wears very casual clothes to the office.

She's re-dressing you already?
(Chuckle)
Been there, done that, don't have the T-Shirts anymore.

None is so poor that he need sit on a pumpkin. That is shiftlessness. There is a plenty of such chairs as I like best in the village garrets to be had for taking them away. Furniture! Thank God, I can sit and I can stand without the aid of a furniture warehouse.

What man but a philosopher would not be ashamed to see his furniture packed in a cart and going up country exposed to the light of heaven and the eyes of men, a beggarly account of empty boxes? That is Spaulding's furniture. I could never tell from inspecting such a load whether it belonged to a so-called rich man or a poor one; the owner always seemed poverty-stricken.

Indeed, the more you have of such things the poorer you are. Each load looks as if it contained the contents of a dozen shanties; and if one shanty is poor, this is a dozen times as poor. Pray, for what do we move ever but to get rid of our furniture, our exuviae; at last to go from this world to another newly furnished, and leave this to be burned?

It is the same as if all these traps were buckled to a man's belt, and he could not move over the rough country where our lines are cast without dragging them, -- dragging his trap. He was a lucky fox that left his tail in the trap. The muskrat will gnaw his third leg off to be free. No wonder man has lost his elasticity."

http://www.kenkifer.com/Thoreau/economy4.htm

I suspect AP did a 'merican version of the Times article ... but the affect apparenlty applies to European wealth as well :-)