That’s how many things we own on average. How we tame the chaos on a small scale and thus also serve the big picture is what the “My thing!”
A much-read book from the early years of the environmental movement was called: “Many things make you poor”. In the meantime, the problem of the affluent society has become even greater. But there is also a counter-movement. In recent years, a number of concepts related to mucking out and clearing out apartments and houses have emerged: the KonMari method, death cleaning, the 30-day challenge, to name just three.
The TU Berlin, the online information service “co2online” and the Berlin research institute Conpolicy have now launched a citizen science project to explore whether this “decluttering” (removal of waste) can help to consume less in the long term – and thus relieve the climate and environment . Title: “My thing!”.
It can hardly be disputed that the number of objects owned by Germans has grown enormously in recent decades. 100 years ago, a household got by with around 180 items. According to the Federal Statistical Office, Germans now hoard an average of 10,000 things in their own four walls.
Years ago, the Greifswald architect Henrike Gänß tested what that means in an experiment on herself. She counted everything she owned. She came up with 2,506 items with a total weight of around 3.5 tons. Laid side by side, this would have resulted in a distance of 903 meters and an area of 273 square meters. Judith Gebbe, a business administration student from Iserlohn, later repeated the experiment. She had reached 2198 when she broke off her count in exasperation, including 251 pieces of clothing, 237 decorative items, 122 nails and screws, 100 books, 100 old Bravo, 21 pens, 17 pairs of shoes, eight USB sticks, six scissors, three Drinking bottles and two stuffed animals.
It is interesting how Gänß evaluates her things. Of the 2,506 items, she classified only 18.4 percent as really important (“vital”), the proportion of items that were never or almost never used was 46.5 percent, almost half. An enormous consumption of resources and energy that is wasted on more or less unimportant things.
This is where the hands-on project “MeinDing!” comes in, for which citizens are now being sought who have experience in “purifying” things and then want to share this for a scientific evaluation. It is funded by the Federal Ministry of Research. German households are crammed with objects, and most of them are hardly or not used at all. “The wardrobe is overflowing, the desk is full, and even in the storage room there hasn’t been anything left for a long time,” is how project manager Nadine Walikewitz from the co2online portal describes the initial situation.
The aim of the campaign: “Less stuff, but more clarity about the things that we use and value.” In the project, the flood of objects is checked in three phases, and then there are instructions for clearing out and dealing with things in a new way – everything on-line. According to the Federal Environment Agency, every German produces an average of 11.6 tons of greenhouse gases every year. Co-initiator Samira Iran from the TU Berlin assumes that a less “cluttered” life can make an important contribution to reducing a person’s CO2 footprint. However, it could also be that clearing out and creating space even stimulates the purchase of new things. “These possible ‘rebound effects’ should therefore be given special attention in the project,” explains Iran.
But the campaign is not just about the environment and climate. Because: Having a lot without knowing what – that is often experienced as a psychological burden, explains Walikewitz. And so detoxification can also ensure a better personal quality of life.
The project will start in March and run for a year. Interest in the project is already high, although it hasn’t received much publicity yet. More than 500 people have already registered. Information and registration: www.projekt-meinding.de
