Within the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, a trilogy told in five parts, Douglas Adams postulates that a rapid increase in the number of high street shoe shops is a clear indicator of the impending collapse of a civilization. Today, I am suggesting that Adams got it wrong; and instead of shoe stores, it’s the never ending construction and use of indoor storage facilities that is the harbinger of our society’s inevitable doom. 

Why are we so fixated upon storing possessions that will rarely see the light of day again? Boxes of paperwork, generations of photos, and great grandma’s old wooden chest are just some of the items our kids will be dealing with at the end of our days.  Current monthly rentals run in the order of $200 to $500 for storing all our knickknacks, and the cubic capacity for conserving our personal histories continues to rise. 

During the pandemic, an acquaintance actually bought a second house because his primary residence was full, and he had run out of room to store his constantly growing collection of furniture, art and books.  Last year, I filled a large dumpster with a small part of my life’s detritus, and it was difficult to see the difference. This year, I gifted hundreds of books and DVDs to a local charity, and I finally felt some weight lifted from my shoulders. My closets are next, and the hardest part will be the kilts. 

In Sweden, they have the gentle art of death cleaning, where seniors or those battling a terminal illness organize and declutter their homes so as to save their loved ones from the burden of this cumbersome chore while grieving their loss. A more sensible life activity I cannot name, and it is the anthesis of IKEA and its flat pack storage frenzy.   

Paperwork can be digitised, meta-tagged and stored safely in the cloud. Photos likewise, and both collections can be searched and retrieved instantly, if and when needed; whereas great grandma’s chest should either be offered to the kids, or if they don’t want it, (and we all know they don’t want it) sold or gifted to someone who really has a use for it.  

Adams describes civilisation’s collapse because, in the end, all that could be bought were shoes, and so eventually we took to the trees and evolved wings.  Perhaps if we all just dealt with this overflow of physical possessions, communities could use these multi-storey repositories to provide housing and other amenities to help combat the current homelessness and lack of social housing infrastructure. 

Let’s adopt Scandinavian ways, and modify the tradition, so that starting today, indoor storage buildings gain a more meaningful use while decluttering our lives, and lifting all that weight from our shoulders.  In the meantime, I may have found a good home for my kilts within the next generation, and surprisingly, my business suits are being eyed too!