Storage Space

Every family in America is affected by the storage space they have in their domain.  Can the closets be crammed  with anymore stuff?  When you walk in the kids room and see the mess, can you even yell at them for not cleaning their room if their toys can't be stowed anywhere?  Can you entertain in the family room without piling all that junk into the garage.  Can you even park your vehicle in the garage?  Are the kids bikes kept permanently on the porch because the garage is a piled so deep and stacked so high with stuff that it can't hold anymore.  I bet the answers are yes for most of America.

The problem is not entirely with the  American people.  Business have an awful lot to do with American's residence busting at the seams.  Stores like Lowes, Home Depot, Target, and Walmart need to move oodles of product to be successful and profitable.  Most of their customers own stock in these Big Box Stores, which do quite well, and return the favor by buying a lot of  merchandise from them.  Go into any of these stores and you will see a whole aisle of cheap plastic products which are used for storage.  Buy these to store stuff to go under the bed, the closets, the pantry, under the couches,  to fill the closets, and under the basement steps. The more merchandise you can store in the house, the more new things you an buy.  If the goods are hidden away, you might even buy something new you already own!  Cha Ching for the stores!

Americans do not clean out their homes at all anymore.  They keep piling up the bins and bags of stuff till it becomes so overwhelming it becomes time to rent a storage unit at a mini warehouse. I would think that would be the reason enough to  force them to go through and get rid of some of their stuff.  Most will fill up the warehouse space rather quickly.   For being lazy,  having too much money for some, out of sight out of mind, people have stuffing their homes for a long time.  

This duplication is a serious waste and it makes a nasty mess of the USA's Gross National Product.  If American's are buying  say 20% of product that they don't need eventually this will inflate the USA's GNP.  This means we are producing and importing more product than needed, and this will cause the value of those goods to go lower than they otherwise would have.   If value goes down price goes down, and now employers have to make cuts, to reduce cost, by letting employees go, and next thing you know we are in the throws an old fashioned recession.  

One could even make the argument that the "storage space" strategy of the big box retailers is harming our economy rather than helping it grow.  Don't get me wrong, Walmart moves some goods in this country.  I been in transportation for 30 years, and I can tell you Walmart's distribution network on the ground is the best worldwide.  What I am saying is maybe, just maybe, Walmart can shoot for a more manageable growth. Walmart has been making serious money in both America and China for over many generations. In the world economy whats bad for the USA is great for China, and we all know Walmart is good for China!  

As I put this to blog I realize that American consumers have the power to straighten this out.  We decide what we need, when we need it, and when we will buy, even with major advertising spending billions to coerce us.  We need to buy American products and services when we are able.  We need to encourage manufactures, suppliers, vendors, and retailers to buy and supply American.  This will put more people to work in the USA, and will also show the "Big Box Retailers" that American's can be the smart consumers just as we were in the Twentieth Century.  This might show China that they will have to make plans for Asia's 3 billion people.  The shoulders of Americans are not that strong, we we can be that smart, our Nations health depends on this.  Buy American when you need something.