I’d rather go to Rome.

This article on materialism in the New York Times is fascinating in many ways. While I sympathize greatly with the idea, I can’t even imagine getting down to only one hundred possessions (my library would blow the whole experiment to heck right there). However, since this is a Walmart blog, I’ll cover the Walmart angle:

At the height of the recession in 2008, Wal-Mart Stores realized that consumers were “cocooning” — vacationing in their yards, eating more dinners at home, organizing family game nights. So it responded by grouping items in its stores that would turn any den into an at-home movie theater or transform a backyard into a slice of the Catskills. Wal-Mart wasn’t just selling barbecues and board games. It was selling experiences.

“We spend a lot of time listening to our customers,” says Amy Lester, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart, “and know that they have a set amount to spend and need to juggle to meet that amount.”

Wow, turning your backyard into the Catskills? That’s a pretty lame experience. The next paragraph suggests to me that the NYT secretly agrees:

One reason that paying for experiences gives us longer-lasting happiness is that we can reminisce about them, researchers say. That’s true for even the most middling of experiences. That trip to Rome during which you waited in endless lines, broke your camera and argued with your spouse will typically be airbrushed with “rosy recollection,” says Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside.

Hey honey, do you remember the time we got a big bag of chips and watched TV all night? Ah, those were the days. Pass the Cheez-Its, babe.

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