What would you do if you had to use—let alone actually enjoy—everything you own?
Truth be told, most of us will never live long enough to accomplish such an overwhelming requirement. Instead, we pack it, stack it, and pile it away—even pay rent to store it. Then we keep right on accumulating, acquiring, and attaining even more. More doesn’t add to our joy the way we thought it would. More stuff dilutes the quality of our lives.
Vilfredo Pareto, an Italian economist, “discovered” the “Pareto principle” in 1897, when he observed that 80 percent of the land in England (and every country he subsequently studied) was owned by 20 percent of the population. Pareto’s theory of predictable imbalance has been widely proven and applied to almost every aspect of modern life, including the things we own.
So, let’s think this through: If 80 percent of what we use comes from 20 percent of what we own, a huge amount of the space in our homes is occupied by stuff we never use; it’s clutter!
