Most of the things in your house that you are looking at right now, the things you believe are essential, are actually just future garbage..
We have been lied to.
We have been programmed to believe that convenience equals happiness and that possession equals security. But you do not own your stuff. Your stuff owns you.
Every item you bring into your home is a silent contract. It forces you to maintain it, clean it, organize it, store it, worry about it, and eventually get rid of it. None of that labor is included in the price.
Financial sobriety does not just happen. There is a real effect when purchasing items. You are never just buying the item. You are buying an idea. An illusion. The promise that if you own this thing, your life will finally transform and you will reach your goals and ambitions.
If I buy this organizer, my house will look like a Pinterest board.
If I buy this product, I will be just as put together as that girl online.
If I buy this routine, I will finally be organized, disciplined, worthy.
Insecurity is used as leverage.
I am told the world is chaotic and overwhelming, and that I can manage that chaos if I buy the right things. We are damaged and hollowed out by the systems we live in, and we keep trying to fill that emptiness with external matter.
So here is the question we need to ask ourselves.
If everything in your house disappeared tomorrow, leaving you only with what is strictly necessary for survival, would your value as a human being decrease?
Why do we allow objects to dictate our self worth?
We were not born with a burning desire to own stuff. This desire was implanted.
Look around at the current landscape in America. We are living in the era of the restock video, the hidden ad, the constant onslaught of marketing at every level of our attention and on every surface we interact with.
You go to the gas station and there are video ads on the pump.
You drive down the road and there are billboards.
There are ads on people’s cars.
Ads on your phone. Ads in every app you use.
People are walking around wearing ads.
The advertising industry spends enormous amounts of money to ensure you are bombarded with their ideas at every waking moment. Their entire job is to create artificial urgency and an endless desire to consume.
If they could figure out how to implant ads into your brain while you slept, they would.
Look at smart appliances with touchscreens. Those are not there to help you. They exist so they can eventually wear you down enough to put ads on devices you already own. Pay to remove them, like Hulu, or accept commercials on your own fucking toaster.
Modern culture and advertising have weaponized insecurity. They tell you that the chaotic, high pressure world outside, a world created by late stage capitalism and the patriarchy, can be controlled if you just buy the right item.
We are living in an economy based on performance.
The home is no longer a place to live. It is a stage. A space where you are expected to demonstrate competence, taste, success. The organized person. The person with aesthetic restraint. The ideal version of “that girl,” always calm, always curated, always exhausted.
Consumerism has quietly shifted the definition of essential.
Essentials used to mean food, water, and shelter. Now it’s buy this or you are failing. Use that or you are neglectful. Ten skincare products or you are ugly and unlovable. Eighteen different cleaners or your house is disgusting and no one will want to visit you.
Most of this stuff is toxic. It is full of carcinogenic scents and chemicals. It is terrible for the environment. It is packaged in plastic and shipped long distances even though it is mostly water (water is heavy to ship). Then it gets washed down the drain and poisons waterways.
This is a system designed to extract. Late stage capitalism depends on disposability, insecurity, and the urge to accumulate.
No one is immune to propaganda.
Disposable convenience might be the clearest example. Single use products designed to be bought, used briefly, and thrown away. Paper towels. Wipes. Endless replacements for things that could be reused.
The environmental cost of this convenience is enormous. Trees are cut down, processed, shipped across vast distances, bleached with chemicals, wrapped in plastic, used for moments, and discarded. Much of it will not even decompose properly because it contains plastic.
Then comes the final irony.
Buying more stuff to manage the stuff you already own. More bins. More shelves. More organizers. Plastic to store plastic. Working extra hours to afford objects that quietly create more work.
That is not control. It is an exercise in delusion.
At the end of the day, you are still responsible for all of it. It takes mental energy. You worry about it. You move it. You clean it. You organize it. You track expiration dates and try to use things up before they go bad.
You buy stuff to store your stuff.
……
I am too poor to buy cheap things.
So slow down. Ask better questions.
How long will this last?
What will it ask of me?
Does this serve my life, or will my life end up serving it?
Be intentional about what you consume beyond objects too. Less doom scrolling. More choosing. If you do not know what you want to watch, do not watch anything. Read a fucking book. Sit quietly. Let your mind exist in silence sometimes.
This week, I made my second full car trip of 2026 to the donation drop off center. Two full trips already. I mailed off ten bags of fabric for recycling. I let go of an old suitcase of craft supplies from my cosplay years. Appliances that no longer serve me. Kitchenware I refuse to use because it is plastic or teflon. Dog supplies that no longer fit my dogs’ needs. A skull rug from my old condo bedroom.
Still waiting on the porch are more things on their way out. Working vacuum cleaners. An extra TV left behind by a former roommate. Bags of clothing, including business suits I do not plan to wear again.
I am leaning into my comfy girl era. Linen dresses whenever possible. Clothes that let me breathe. A life that does not require me to prove competence through objects.
It feels less like loss and more like relief.
Things do not make you happy. They only promise to.
I want a life where my energy goes into living, not managing. Where my home is a place to rest, not a stage to maintain. Where I am not constantly negotiating my worth with a system that profits from insecurity.
Shift the question.
Does this item serve me, or will I have to serve it?
Because the borrower is the slave to the lender.
And the owner is often the servant to their things.
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