A group of scientists actually did a study on this! Anthropologists and archaeologists from the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families did a 4-year study of 32 middle-class American families. They studied them the same way that they would study animal subjects even taking saliva samples to study stress hormones. What they discovered is that America has too much stuff and it's stressing them out. Leave it to the scientists to spend lots of money to tell us something we already know!
The study and accompanying photos have been documented in the book Life at Home in the Twenty-First Century. I ordered this book through Amazon and I'm really looking forward to reading it (unfortunately, it's on back order). Marketing companies track what we, as a society, buy, when we buy it and where we buy it but there has never been a study of what we do with all of it after we get it home.
"A refrigerator door cluttered with magnets, calendars, family photos, phone numbers, and sports schedules generally indicates the rest of the home will be in a similarly chaotic state" - The Boston Globe
This is my refrigerator.
I have a calendar on one side.
And I have one photo of a couple of adorable children on the front.
So what does the front of your refrigerator look like?
By the way, after informing my mother of this study, she decided to go home and clean off her fridge. She figures the rest of the house will just fall into place after. I'm not sure it works quite like that!
This is quite timely! I had planned to clearing my refrigerator today! I want to put my new calendar on it but it is too cluttered. You must have been reading my mind. :)
ReplyDeleteExcellent post. Thanks.
I'm thinking you've hit the nail on the head with this one (and all the rest, too, of course). My fridge looks a lot better than it did, and so does the rest of my house.
ReplyDeleteHowever, your mom has a point...maybe if I clean off the fridge completely, the rest of the house will fall into place afterwards! LOL
My fridge looks like the first photo. I do go through the items about once a month, but they are all there because they contain info I want at hand in the kitchen, or they are things that make me smile. I fully acknowledge that the theory holds true -- there is in general too much stuff in my house. But I'm not sure that clearing off the fridge, thereby losing my "kitchen bulletin board", would make a big difference. I'll just say that perhaps I should be sure to remove outdated info promptly.
ReplyDelete