In that very instant, just minutes from the moment in which you bought it, your car is worth about 10 percent less than the price you paid 2-even though it’s still got that new car smell (which is often the toxic additives in the PVC off-gassing, may I remind you) and there’s not a scratch on it! But all the ordinary things that fill up our homes and our lives-this Stuff loses value like an inflatable PVC pool float loses air.įor example, it’s commonly said that your car loses more of its value the day you drive it off the lot than on any other day (barring a day of catastrophic collision).
The words “garage” and “garbage” must be related, Seinfeld points out, because pretty much everything that enters the first becomes the second.īut in all seriousness, economists have a real term for this transformation: “depreciation.” Now, it’s true that not every last thing we can buy depreciates: certain luxury items like fine art, antiques and collectibles, jewelry and well-crafted rugs are bought by the small percentage of people who can afford them with the expectation that these things will increase in value over time. We get something and it starts out prominently displayed, then gets moved into a cupboard or onto a shelf, then stuffed in a closet, then thrown in a box in the garage and held there until it becomes garbage. 1 As soon as Stuff enters our homes, it begins the transformation.
“Our houses are basically garbage processing centers,” comedian Jerry Seinfeld riffed during a 2008 tour. But once it belongs to us and takes up space inside our home, the Stuff starts losing value. What we paid for in the store and brought home was a treasure, a prize -a shiny toy, a stylish T-shirt, the latest model cell phone or laptop or camera. DISPOSALĪ funny thing happens to most of our Stuff almost immediately after we buy it. The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession with Stuff is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and our Health-and a Vision for Change - Annie Leonard (2010) Chapter 5.
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