Story of Stuff

As a parent, one of the things I am struggling with is Stuff – all kinds of stuff – right from the basic water bottles we buy to satisfy thirst to the many toys and stationery we end up purchasing to build my son! Stuff is everywhere. The other day, I picked up a new table (add on Big stuff – necessary at this point of time) and then I sat down to clean (weed) the stuff on my table and in my daily use cupboard. And I spent close to 3hours finding stuff, thinking about ‘should I keep and should I not’ and then finally removing quite a bit of stuff – so I can have a cleaner, more efficient work space.

Well, my work space does look neat, but my dustbin is overflowing, and soon the contents of my dustbin will flood this earth. So what am I doing?

Thinking about all this stuff and how it became a part of my life and where it goes – brought me to this fantastic site – The story of stuff a project by Anne Leonard. It simply floored me!

Anne’s narration is crystal clear and tells the story – but what keeps me riveted to the screen are the simple visual animations that pictorially present the story. This is the power of using visual sketching with a live person narrating the story. A presentation with facts, true stories and simple visuals – speaking the fact: Content is still king, when aided by right visuals and a compelling story.

Well, it is definitely meant to address the US market – but it speaks volumes visually and I think it is high-time every country thinks about this – and works ways to reduce their dependence on stuff.

Change always starts with one person, so why don’t you start? Now!

PS: India is definitely not spared as Anne says in the Story of bottled water, that many empty bottles find their dumping ground in Chennai. Maybe it has a tag, “From US with love” (I have not been to this dump-site, so I don’t know the authenticity of this bottled water dumping in Chennai) But nevertheless it is shocking and tells us to act Now.