Everything You Own, Left Outside
What would it look like if you went into your home, dragged everything you owned outside and took a photo of it? Well, it would probably look like you were having a garage sale, but maybe it’d make you think about why you own the things you own, or what you could live without. Photographer Huang Quingjun took photos of people with all of their belongings in cities across China, and it’s fascinating to see what people keep in their homes depending on where they live, and how wealthy they are. The photos also remind me that I should probably take some time this weekend to put together a Goodwill bag and get rid of stuff I no longer need. Oh, all the things I keep for no reason other than I don’t want to let them go.
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Previously on The Billfold
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This was done excellently in 1995, internationally:
http://www.amazon.com/Material-World-Global-Family-Portrait/dp/0871564300
It’s a wonderful book to own; I had to buy it for a sociology class and it was the best textbook purchase I ever made.
I have done this when moving before.
That would take one million years.
This is amazing!
*shares on facebook*
I started thinking, over the weekend, what it would take to move from my three-bedroom house into a smaller apartment with my partner (we’ve been discussing a move to somewhere with higher housing costs), and the idea of shrinking down all my stuff is kind of scary. I moved into this house from a five-bedroom house I had furnished mostly on my own, and into that from an even bigger five-bedroom house I also furnished large on my own, except some of the bedrooms. Somewhere in there I also merged households with someone and got a lot of furniture from my parents. Oh dear. This is going to be painful, if we have to do it.