I love stuff. I’m not a minimalist. I like colour, prints, patterns, and anything remotely pretty. I collect things, too – craft supplies, wrapping supplies, games, puzzles, fidget toys (yes, fidget toys – I know.)

In fact, I love having small collections of things, don’t ask me why.

I buy things I don’t need more than I’d like to admit, and have fallen victim to the late night clutches of retail therapy. (Hello, mindless scrolling for hours on end.)

Maybe you can relate?

It took me a while – years, in fact, but I’m slowly starting to change my relationship with stuff.

I no longer enjoy owning things, just for the sake of it. The things I do own have to serve a purpose or mean something to me. If I can’t justify why they’re important, eventually they’ll get sold or given away.

I’m no saint, and this is definitely a work in progress, but when I start feeling disarmingly overwhelmed by my possessions, instead of comforted by them, I know it’s time to take action.

Owning things is important. It helps us define our style and communicate non-verbal clues to the world about who we are and what drives us.

As a society, living in an era of fingertip-technology and instant gratification, I believe we all struggle with the ‘stuff’ dilemma sometimes. We need possessions to live, but how and when does it become too much?

I’ve learnt the hard way that it’s not new purchases that make me happy. And so many times in the past, I’ve just as quickly forgotten, and gone out in search of that one elusive thing, that one thing that was the exception. After all, the chase is half of the fun, right?

We chase stuff because we are chasing a level of contentment and peace, that we often can’t obtain through our day to day life. We chase stuff because we are chasing happiness, and just like true happiness is hard to come by, so too our search for more valuables is ongoing and persistent.

We yearn for new possessions because possessions are tangible and often the real things we are yearning for are not. And we chase more stuff, because it’s easier to chase things than to realise that true happiness doesn’t, in fact, come from them.