About a decade ago, I loaded a couple of midsize suitcases, three large Ikea bags, a pair of 10-gallon Rubbermaid totes, a laundry basket, and two heavily sedated cats into a U-Haul and moved from Toronto to New York City. All my belongings fit neatly into my tiny new Brooklyn bedroom, with plenty of square footage to spare. Turns out, my relative lack of stuff was right on trend.
At the time, millennials like me were buying and owning less, purportedly breaking the mold of American consumerism. We Instagrammed our sparsely furnished, interiors. We eschewed car ownership and suburban McMansions in favor of bikes, car-share memberships, and big-city apartments with roommates.
We were spending our money — and , too. "If the millennials are not quite a postdriving and postowning generation, they'll almost certainly be a less-driving and less-owning generation," declared a September 2012 article in titled "The Cheapest Generation." Our reputation quickly found a nifty shorthand: .
As I write this from the same tiny Brooklyn bedroom, I can see my closet doors straining against the weight of a nearly bursting trash bag filled with cast-off clothing I keep meaning to recycle. The three Ikea bags are stacked full of dirty laundry, which my partner or I would probably get around to washing if we didn't have plenty of other stuff to wear. Our dresser top is strewn with impulse buys you'd find in a drugstore checkout line.
I can think of a few descriptors for the state of my surro.