Refuse

Stuff accumulates fast for many Americans, Europeans, and others around the world.  Material possessions seem to appear in our homes at a frightening rate, as if stuff were a kind of unstoppable and rapidly spreading bacteria.  Not just a few of us experience a feeling of helplessness as stuff spreads around our homes and overtakes our lives.  We feel unable to turn down stuff when others give stuff to us or persuade us to get stuff.

To refuse stuff from others and to refuse ourselves of stuff is the second step in a self-aware response to being “stuck in stuff.”  If reducing the amount of stuff in our lives frees us to consider the real value of stuff, we can be sure it also makes room in our consumer-conditioned minds to ponder what additional stuff we might acquire.  Proactively reducing the amount of stuff we possess is not enough to sufficiently free ourselves from stuff.  We must teach ourselves to deny ourselves of stuff.

And so the second of three responses advocated by StuckInStuff.com to our over abundance is to refuse to receive and to buy more stuff.