# Correlation between refrigerator magnets and "stuff."



## brad (May 22, 2009)

Interesting article in the NY Times today about a forthcoming book on American consumerism, which found, among other things, a direct correlation between the number of magnets on a family's fridge and the amount of stuff they have in their house.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/g...on-hyper-abundance-and-the-american-home.html

So, how many magnets are on your refrigerator? I went downstairs just now and counted 17. That seems like a lot; not sure the correlation holds well for us as our house is uncluttered and we're pretty religious about getting rid of things we don't use.

How many magnets are on your fridge, and do you think it correlates with the amount of stuff you have?


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

brad said:


> Interesting article in the NY Times today about a forthcoming book on American consumerism, which found, among other things, a direct correlation between the number of magnets on a family's fridge and the amount of stuff they have in their house.
> 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/g...on-hyper-abundance-and-the-american-home.html
> 
> ...


It applies in our house - we have at probably 50-100 magnets and tons of junk in our house.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

The exterior of our fridge got completely full with magnets (all 3 sides), so we started putting them inside the fridge.
Yeah, we had to throw out some food to make room, but so what.

I am only half kidding.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

HaroldCrump said:


> The exterior of our fridge got completely full with magnets (all 3 sides), so we started putting them inside the fridge.
> Yeah, we had to throw out some food to make room, but so what.
> 
> I am only half kidding.


Haha - let me guess. A lot of them are letters from the alphabet and numbers?


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

Um. I have no magnets on my fridge. Also, when I got to this job, which has a metal cabinet for my coat, there were a bunch of magnets on it and I took them all off and threw them out.


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## dogcom (May 23, 2009)

I never thought how important fridge magnets are in our lives. I hang my calender with them along with many other important reminders and papers I need on the go. I think fridge magnets come close to post its in our lives. Wasn't it George on Seinfeld who once claimed in one episode that he invented post its and now that I think of it the writers could have had him say fridge magnets as well.


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## scomac (Aug 22, 2009)

22 on ours. With respect to 'stuff'; we moved into this house with about 3 pick-up truck loads of belongings. We did it in an afternoon with two helpers. I doubt we could get out of here now on anything short of a full tractor-trailor and a brigade of helpers. :rolleyes2:

Time to purge!


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

Four Pillars said:


> Haha - let me guess. A lot of them are letters from the alphabet and numbers?


Yep, sounds like you speak from experience ;o)

That aside, we are probably an exception to this theory, if it is even valid to begin with.
We have lots of fridge magnets, but we are not "drowning in stuff", as the author claims.
Sure, we can all make do with less.
But our stuff is neatly organized, everything has an assigned space, and most of the "stuff" gets used on a regular basis.


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## Young&Ambitious (Aug 11, 2010)

Wow this is interesting, I got to say, this makes sense! I have less than 10 and they are used to hold papers and sushi menus  woohoo. 

Although I have to say, I have stuff... but in my defense it's only because I downsized to a city bachelor sized condo


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

4 magnets and no stuff. We purge every year because we sublet our place when we go south.

(Our neighbour who went bankrupt 17 years ago, finally got evicted. They worked all day to get his stuff into boxes and put into storage. I think some of the stuff came from his former house and had never been touched while here. He is 83.)


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## Sampson (Apr 3, 2009)

Have to go home and count, but it is fewer than 10. Although each is responsible for holding a bunch of crap that my son has made.

Perhaps we will get more and more as time goes on.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

I used to attend auctions with my buddy for something to do..........and I learned something from the experience.

For most of us...............our stuff amounts to a whole lot of nothing of value. I would see people's lifetime of collecting laid out on a few tables and sold for 1 dollar a box full.

On the other hand..........occasionally we would go to an auction that really opened my eyes.

One older gentleman passed away, and they were having an auction of his lifetime collection of old glass. There were vases, containers, hydro glass, and other assorted glass object. A big room was completely full of the display.........thousands of objects.

The crowd was packed and the bidding was hot and heavy. Often each item was selling for 400...500 dollars or more.

My buddy knew the widow and pointed her out..............."Look at her just beaming, he said. Old Bert collected all this stuff for 40 years and she wouldn't let any of "his junk" in their house. He kept it all in his garage out back. She was always mad at him for saving it."

The widow collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from the auction which took 2 days to complete.

Another real life story about "junk".

About 20 years ago, I went out to my new wife's parents farmhouse in Saskatchewan for a farm anniversary celebration.

Many guests arrived from all over and one of them was my wife's cousin from Vancouver, BC.

She arrived in the farm yard driving an antique Janguar, and all dolled up.

She was very interesting to talk to ............and we learned that her late husband had owned a great deal of the land that is now part of Vancouver's shoreline and harbour area. He had a fishing bait shack and marina on the water and was involved in many other local businesses. ( I am sure she showed us a black and white photograph of her husband standing by a small wooden shack along a short pier by the water)

She knew nothing about his business affairs.

After he passed away, she was going through his old desk and found some papers in the drawers. She was putting them in the trash, when she thought perhaps she should give them to her accountant.........as they had something about "gold" on them.

Turned out they were original shares for one of the big gold companies...........can't remember which one now, but they were worth almost a million dollars.

And she didn't even know he had them...............sheesh.


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## sags (May 15, 2010)

A little off topic...........but regarding the story above..........we never met the cousin again.........and lost contact with her.

I was always curious though.........because she gave us a Better Homes and Gardens calendar that featured the front lawn of her home on the cover. The home had a front yard that cascaded down to the water and was totally landscaped in gardens etc.

The home is probably gone now, but can anyone recommend a good website to do some research of Vancouver?

We can't even remember the cousin's last name now..........because it was her married name.

Just curious.............


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## jamesbe (May 8, 2010)

stainless fridge, magnets don't stick


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I used to have 1 or 2 magnets to hold a paper or 2, now none. I can fit all my junk in a quarter of a sea container, with plenty of room in there for a full size car and motorbike. Feels good to get rid of anything I don't need.


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## Barwelle (Feb 23, 2011)

Here's a question for all you that have very little or no stuff. What have you done with all your keepsake type stuff? e.g. Photo albums; old journals or sketch books; letters from old friends; souvenirs and other things from trips; cards (bday, wedding, those cards they hand out at funerals); the cutesy stuff from DW/DH/SO when you first started dating; if you have kids, any stuff from their childhood. And what about stuff like bank statements, bills, tax returns, car purchase/repair/maintenance records?

I definitely have stuff that I don't need, though not an outrageous amount. (I don't have many fridge magnets either.) My biggest problem is figuring out what to do with stuff like above, plus textbooks and binders from college. I also have a lot of books that I'll never read again to pawn off/give away, but that won't be hard. It's those keepsakes...


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## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

I haven't done this myself, but what the professional organizers say to do is scan it in, so you have a digital copy you can look at whenever you want but you don't need to keep the original paper version.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

All my keepsakes are in shoeboxes in a larger box of stuff. I keep anything remotely keepsakish in a shoebox, and a few large boxes are easy to store. All the statements go in a filing cabinet but I wish I scanned them so I didn't have to empty the cabinet. My problem is receipts.. that's gonna get me one day. I never throw out an important receipt, but I'm not sure I could find one I needed. Anything consumerist I don't use is sold or given away.


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

Oh my goodness. College textbooks are "keepsakes"? Not for me. FWIW I have one box of mementoes, and one box of pix of my kids. I'm just not that sentimental, if that isn't apparent from any one of my other eleventy billion threads on this board.


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## Barwelle (Feb 23, 2011)

Mode, I used to keep most receipts (I had hoped to enter it all into some kind of financial tracking software) but once I realized I never would, chucked everything except for receipts for expensive things that still have warranties. Do you have that many receipts for important stuff? Shoeboxes could be a good idea. Just gotta sort through all my crap.

Oh no MG, let me clarify, I don't consider the textbooks and binders to be keepsakes. What I took was a technical program where most courses were relevant and practical (not like university where it seems there are a lot of fluff courses... no offence to any university grads). So if I stay in my industry, I could actually use some of those books (and have already). Some textbooks, I'll never use, but I'm not sure about my notes, homework, reports, etc.

Hehe... how big are these boxes though? Tote boxes, or shoe boxes? Nice Tolkein word there... "eleventy".


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

I have most (if not all) of my college textbooks.
Possibly, some from high school as well.

They don't cause any clutter, for the simple reason that they are all in my parents' home.
They have threatened to throw those out many times, but if they really wanted to, they would have by now.


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## donald (Apr 18, 2011)

I have one magnet on my fridge(the property managers #)I'm more of a top of the fridge guy with a few things(photos,calender,ect)I have pretty much a barebones place(i don't have one picture-art or life photo's)My ex use to bug me when i did live in a home(you have to make it a home don not a house,make it a bit more ''warm" lol.

I keep most of my keepsakes in my parents basement in a few boxes in a section.Funny story,in a look back way(way smaller scale than sags but along the same lines)My uncle also use to have his stuff @ my grams/grands house in boxes(he end up moving to the states)He had a MINT collection of hockey cards,some how there was miscommunication(he 4 real had a bobby orr rookie card and other's)One day my grams chucked all of them(were talking some were in glass,lol)She though they were just his ''play'' cards from his youth(and i guess the collection was somehow not talked about for alot of years)Could of been worth a few ks(when cards were still ''hot'')


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

I'm not much of a keepsake person either. I have one photo album with about six pictures from my youth. I didn't even save my diplomas from high school or college (nor did I go to either graduation ceremony; I'm not into ceremonies in general). I did save some journals and sketchbooks from my teenage years. When I moved to Canada from the States I had to prepare an inventory of everything I owned and its value in Canadian dollars. That was a big incentive to get rid of stuff: the less I had, the less I had to put on the inventory. I got rid of 70% of my books.

I think the requirement for receipts is three years, right? I do have them going back further than that and need to clean out those files. I do keep tax returns going back at least 10 years, but not before that.


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## kcowan (Jul 1, 2010)

In 2009, I went through the parent home (since 1937) and found all kinds of stuff. Momentos from happier times. I kept all the photos and got rid of everything else (including the programs from when I graduated from public school, high school and university along with all the honours I had collected. Nice memories but the stuff had not been looked at in over 40 years. If in doubt, throw it out!


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## Cal (Jun 17, 2009)

Hmmm.....so UCLA conducted a study and they figured out that people that have alot of crap on their fridge also have alot of crap in their houses. Interesting. I think I will try to hit up U of T and see if they will throw me some grant money to research if people who have alot of crap in their garages also have alot of crap in their houses too.

For the record...1 fridge magnet given to me from my Grandmother, and 1 from an sister in law that is a bottle opener (dual function) from a trip to Greece, otherwise I only keep the local real estate ones that also have a note pad attached (which currently is at a count of 1 too).


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

My bicycle brakes gave out this week. They're probably not cheap.. the self adjusting hydraulic disc jazz. Thought I'd jinxed myself talking about receipts on here, but luckily I found it in a pouch in the garage that came with the bike. (a few weeks out of warranty of course, we'll see) Then I thought smartphones have a solution for everything.. of course I can just photo all my receipts! There's probably even an app for that? I often photo random notes/cards etc to keep my wallet and pockets manageable, but never thought of receipts.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

mode3sour said:


> Then I thought smartphones have a solution for everything.. of course I can just photo all my receipts! There's probably even an app for that? I often photo random notes/cards etc to keep my wallet and pockets manageable, but never thought of receipts.


One of the reasons I try to buy most things online is that I can save the electronic receipts to Dropbox or another cloud storage site with one click. I've noticed some businesses will now email your receipts to you even if you buy something in the store, which is a great idea: you pay at the cash register and instead of printing out a paper receipt that you have to scan and save when you get home, they send it to you by email. 

Having the receipts electronically also allows me to search for them very efficiently, so for example if I search in my Receipts folder for "brakes" it takes me 3 seconds to find the receipt for my own bike brakes that I bought in 2004.


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## m3s (Apr 3, 2010)

I agree, I've also bought everything I could online since the days of eBay. Mainly because it's cheaper and easier to research, but I also found I can just search my gmail account for any receipt. I wasn't sure if Garmin would accept an eBay email receipt.. but they did and the warranty was even a little expired. Big things like a bicycle I still tend to buy locally. That's cool if they email you receipts, I've never had that myself.

I searched the app store for receipts, and they do far more than I expected. You can take a picture of a receipt and have it logged automatically by date/location etc, and even have it make a report of expenses by category in PDF, CSV etc. I found one that will crop and place receipts on a paper sized image, which you can email yourself or directly to work etc. Now that is ingenious for work expenses where I normally have the joy of photocopying and adding up receipts the old way!


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## uptoolate (Oct 9, 2011)

Same as Jamesbe - went to a stainless steel fridge and out of luck on magnets! Was a major trauma! Thankfully all of our exterior doors are steel so they are now carrying the burden. Thanks to Lee Valley for their tiny rare-earth super magnets for putting things up! And yes I would say we have way too much 'stuff'.


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## Square Root (Jan 30, 2010)

All our fridges are stainless steel or match the cupboards. Wouldn't have any magnets anyway. We hate clutter.


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## Koala (Jan 27, 2012)

Lots - magnetic poetry, alphabet and some useful ones including a bottle opener. I do have a lot of stuff.


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

After moving several times I have learned that it just doesn't pay to be sentimental with too much stuff. Yes, I keep stuff that gets used on a regular basis and there are a few non-practical things in the house which I keep. But I do not keep receipts and records of things like phone bills and such. I keep last month's bill, then when this month's bill arrives I schedule the payment in online banking and shred last month's bill, keeping only the current one that was scheduled until the payment goes through. I only keep that which is relevant and gets used on a regular basis plus a small number of personal photos and of course my hobby items. But even the hobby items get downsized on a regular basis. Don't allow stuff to accumulate that you will "get around to one day".

I do have a small number of fridge magnets. All are related to my interests and are relevant. No sense throwing any of those out.


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## realist (Apr 8, 2011)

the-royal-mail said:


> After moving several times I have learned that it just doesn't pay to be sentimental with too much stuff. .


I am a bit of a sentimental pack rat but have gotten really good about digitizing a lot of stuff so at least its all on a hard drive rather than a filing cabinet. The apartment we are currently living in is the first place I have been in for more than two years since I was a kid so I had a good system of purging every time we moved. I am starting to accumulate a lot now, and my wife is worse. Seems like I clean out a shelf and she fills it  We are renting now and I am actually looking forward to eventually moving out to force some organization/purging.


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## HaroldCrump (Jun 10, 2009)

So the UCLA has enough time and money to conduct a study on how many fridge magnets people have?
And its correlation to other stuff in their house.
Geez, if I were a donor to the university, I wouldn't be exactly pleased with my ROI.

Why don't they do something useful...like, how to cure the common cold, or reduce emissions.
How about figure out the correlation between global warming and all the SUV Hummers they drive over there in LA and Orange County.


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