I’m the first to admit that I’m very materialistic. I love stuff. Stuff makes me happy. I like organising it, using it, adding to it, and changing it. I know a lot of people say that materialistic people aren’t happy people, but I am happy. I just love having my things around me and personalising my space.

This weekend I’ve spent a lot of time cleaning and tidying. My room is either extremely messy or extremely tidy, and a lot of that depends on whether my wardrobe drawers are broken or not. They keep breaking under the weight of all my stuff, but me and Joe fixed them up with duct tape (!) today, and I did some rearranging so they don’t have to take the weight of all my spare bedding. I’m really bad at keeping my clothes organised, and they just end up all over the place. My room was reaching epic levels of untidiness due to me getting so much stuff for Christmas and not sorting through it to get rid of all the packaging. I even managed to find two pairs of jeans and a top which I really don’t remember buying. Which is bad, but also good, because the jeans in my size and leg length always get sold out really fast.

The internet, of course, exacerbates my love of stuff by providing shopping in a variety of lovely forms. I’ll also be reviewing lots of my stuff (from geek things to house things to films, books and so on) over at Star-Girl.org. Yep, that’s right, after five years, Star Girl is back as a review site so go check it out if you have a minute :) (I kind of paused development of my portfolio site to get S-G back up, and don’t even get me started on how much I need a new twitter background).

A while back, I thought I’d declutter and live a life of minimalism. Since I have a small house, and am now sharing it with three other people and three cats, space is important. But gradually more and more stuff has appeared. I do buy quite well though; I don’t buy DVDs unless they’re under £5, I buy games online because they’re so much cheaper, and I don’t have much stuff I don’t use. I’m not a hoarder, and I do have big clearouts a couple of times a year. I also try to recycle and donate stuff to charity because I feel guilty throwing it out. As more and more stuff becomes electronic or goes into the cloud, hopefully I’ll be a lot tidier. (On second thoughts, maybe not unless they make virtual clothes. Or maybe clothes which shrink to tiny proportions when you aren’t wearing them).

So, what’s your view on stuff? Are you a minimalist or a hoarder, or somewhere in between? :grin: