Big Yellow Storage company must be doing quite well. I have just seen an advert on television for it. The tag line was along the lines of: "Don't throw away the things you love. Get some space in your life!".
What a fascinating place we live in. Marx would have us believe that we define ourselves in society by our relationship to a means of production. More contemporary theorists talk of the act of consumption as a methodological construction of 'self', so that we are able to 'make' ourselves in the image of what we buy and consume. (This idea is certainly played on by the fashion companies of the world!) But in that sense, consumption needs to be understood as the obtaining of goods and then the destroying of them to make way for more goods: as one buys food and then consumes it. Yet what happens when we consume goods that we then decide to store?
What items do you store? What mementos or trinkets? Are they family photos? Old blankets and clothes? Kitchen wear you hold back for your children's first flat? And how long do you hold them for? What items would it be worth holding on to, yet not cluttering up a house? And how much would you pay for that?
We live, we work, we consume and the economy of the world continues on its merry way. In consumption, there is a reduction of resources. In resource depletion there will be wild spread poverty. But don't worry... those old books you have read a thousand times, and can not bare to throw away, and that horrible vase your mother bought you that you can not stand, but need available if she comes round, they will be there waiting for you - safely in a little yellow box.
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4 comments:
I am perplexed by the self storage phenominon and apart from it being a useful place to stash stuff while people go traveling and alike, it seems like a ridiculous next stage in our obsession for consumption and retaining the trophies of that consumption.
What ever happened to the spring clean where items that had sat unused for a year were discarded? For me, a good clean out is a healthy way to have a stock check and clear some of the pointless clutter I have accumilated. Equally, living in a small flat me and Hannah just don't buy things if we don't have room for it. The idea of paying another monthly rent to store things that are not even important enough to be graced with a place in my own home seems like crazy talk.
But then if we had all kept our star wars toys...we would be e-bay millionaires by now ;)
I had the pleasure of going inside a Big Yellow Self Storage depot when a mate was moving house. It was a very strange place indeed - a factory for hoading stuff. Worth going into though, I would quite like to do a photography project about self storage and what people have in their lock ups!
Apparantly (and it is likely this is urban myth!) some people get a self storage room and use it as a get away. They go there after work and sit in a chair and read or whatever rather than go home to their family. Now that really is strange!
Hmmm...Interesting. Maybe we could to a joint project. I will interview on a anthropological/material culture front, and you on the capturing of consumptive practices and 'boxed' lives....
Hmmm...
I have been thinking about this a little more. I think a character profiling of people and what they would store would be facinating. I think there could be a paper in it for me and a book for you... I bet you £50 we could sell it as a series to the Guardian! lol
I'll go and sit in a box for a few hours if you like!
Oh... hang on... smoking ban! Bugger.
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