Today, Koningsdag, cities in the Netherlands are turned into a big garage sale. On the streets, a never-ending exposition of anything we have got in our homes that we don’t really need*. Thousands of tons of stuff. What can’t be traded for a few coins ends up in the container. It’s like condensing in a few hours our 2014 exploration of the containers of Dutch second hand shop.

Why do we have so much stuff, but we keep needing more?

An interesting blog post by Living Antenna from a few years ago comes to mind. It talks about how to carry out your own Relevant Personal Stuff Assessment and find out how to live more lightly. It basically boils down to dividing your stuff between beautiful things, emotionally important things, tools-devices-and-applications, stuff we actually use and “everything else”. The suggestion that follows is to keep only stuff we actually use.

With Upstyle Industries we try to contribute to the creation of an economy of enough, because we are convinced that we can get what we need using what’s already around. Maybe discarded materials, or maybe just less stuff?

p.s. On Koningsdag we bought two sweaters, a dress, a shirt, a scarf, four records and a book.

*everything in our homes that we don’t really need, i.e. clothes, crockery, toys, bags, belts, scarves, hats, electronics, tools, vases, shoes, bags, books, records, CDs, DVDs, kitchen accessories, outdated cameras and electronics, supplies for machines that don’t exist anymore, blankets, decorations and souvenirs.