What are the goods skills?

Goods skills are important basic skills for modern people. It is estimated that there are up to 50 000 items in Finnish homes. This means a huge amount of work and overflowing homes. Most of us struggle with our belongings on a daily basis. For some, the situation has already become overwhelming. In this article, I'll go through what are "goods skills"? I will also explain how to learn the skills and why knowing them helps with chaos, feelings of shame, stress and everyday struggles. I will also explain what is Calm Your Home workshop by Ruuhkaton.

The article is huge, just like the mountains of stuff in our homes. But the table of contents lets you navigate to the section you want.

It's already incredibly easy for us to buy more stuff, both from local supermarkets and online. They are also cheaper than before. There is also a lot of variation in quality depending on where you buy them, and price is no longer necessarily a guarantee of quality. It is also still relatively easy to get rid of goods and does not necessarily require more in-depth thinking.

Most people have so much stuff in their homes that they can't even remember what they own. We also have an emotional attachment to stuff, and it can be hard to let go of things. In the face of such a mega-trend, you'd think we'd have a name for the skills we need to live in the midst of it all?

A brief history of the need for skills

Just a brief historical perspective: western people have been living in the golden age of industrial production for about 70-80 years now. Before that, people starved, suffered misery, lived in a time of scarcity and stretched their pennies amidst war reparations. It was more than wise to save up all your goods and get more.

Then came the boom period of the market economy, at least in terms of the quantity of goods and the ease of buying. I have a Master's degree in Business and Economics, and I spent my earlier career in marketing. I am currently also a professional organiser. I believe that we need a whole new set of skills in order to navigate in this relatively recent period in human history, where we are being subjected to more and more advertising and marketing communication.

This brings us to goods skills and their definition. Communication professional Jenni Sarras launched the concept of goods skills. She describes them in her book Goods skills.

Definition for Skills of Goods

What are we talking about when we talk about skills of goods? My own definition of "goods skills" is as follows: goods skills are all the skills and knowledge that a person needs to understand and manage their material possessions.

Perception begins before consumption, including the ability to recognise the difference between need and desire, the act of consumption itself, including value choices, and the proper placement, maintenance and recycling of goods. Huh. Quite a big picture, then, and a lot of big themes and concepts.

However, I think that the definition of goods skills should be broad, because it is not just about organising your home or putting things together. This is not something on the side. It is about well-being, even functional ability. Under the same umbrella we can talk about consumer skills and emotional skills. We are talking about the mega-phenomenon of our time, for which we do not yet have the right words.

Now let's create them, so we can get to the problem itself!

Goods skills are the skills we need in order to create a restful everyday environment with our possessions.

For example: the skills not to buy too much, so we don't overbuy and fill our homes with clutter. Skills to coordinate family chores so that no one is yelling at each other in a sea of toys out of sheer overload. The skills of goods help us to know what is the right amount of stuff for our current home and our everyday life, and to be able to take action if we suddenly have too much stuff.

Well-being through skills

I think that goods skills are really important and we should talk about them more. As a professional organiser, I organise homes for families in particular and I would like to see a more widespread use of goods skills to make everyday life easier, especially for parents, and to reduce the burden on families. Similarly, emotional skills were a new concept a while ago, but now their importance has been recognised in the general debate.

What are the goods skills?

So what are goods skills as individual skills? In the previous chapter I gave a broad definition of a large set of skills, so let's now look at them as individual topics. To manage your material possessions, you need to understand

Each of these areas is broad and includes a wide range of skills. In this article, I'll be succinct and straightforward about them, but it's really a complex set of skills, and there are no pure right and wrong statements.

You may also have heard of KonMari, the power of a quarter of an hour or the Sweedish Death Cleaning, for example? These are methods of organising your home, ways of getting your untidy possessions back in order. However, the skills go beyond organisation, especially before the decision to spend. With the help of your goods skills, you have the opportunity to get both your home and your everyday life running the way you want.

Responsible consumption is an area of goods skills

Consumption involves big concepts. It is a whole discipline. I hope this article will give you a general idea of how this relates to our everyday choices and well-being.

In general, our society revolves around buying: consumption is the purchase of services and goods. We believe that by producing more to consume, we can increase shared prosperity and well-being. However, consuming goods is only one aspect of the knowledge of goods.

The family and home well-being perspective in consumption

If consumption is the purchase of services and goods, then responsible consumption also takes into account ethical, ecological and, in my opinion, overall welfare aspects of the household (this brings us to the paradox: we believe that by consuming more we increase welfare. However research shows that too much stuff and overconsumption stresses, anxieties and depresses people).

For example, it is responsible to buy goods produced under transparent production conditions by adult labour for a real need and genuinely estimate wether I can afford it financially or mentally. Or I'm causing myself problems by buying what I want?

From a professional organiser's point of view, the most important thing is to make purchasing decisions that support the everyday life you want. Is the purchase necessary and do you know where to put it? Do you want to spend your time on the goods that this purchase will bring? Do you want to fill your home with this item? It is essential to be aware that every purchase decision adds to your domestic workload in some way.

Management and maintenance of goods as goods skills

Once the decision to buy or purchase has been made - or when someone brings home an item that you've allowed to stay - you move on to managing your physical assets. Every item in your home wants your attention. Items also need frequent maintenance, so you inevitably tie up your time, or at least your hard-earned money, in them.

The maintenance of goods is usually a regular and sometimes very time-consuming process. But it can be fun and rewarding. It can also seem endless list of requirements. One thing is for sure, every item in your home is at least filling up space.

In Finland, you can find e.g. Martta organisation, which also aims to promote the sustainable supply of goods. The Martta´s have lots of advice and tips. One thought-provoking list can be found here from their website.

Recycling is one of the skills

At some point, there is a need to get rid of material assets. In this case, you can sell, donate or recycle, for example. Each of these things takes time and effort and requires different skills.

By selling, you can get back part of the purchase price of the goods, sometimes even more. Donating can make you feel good, as can recycling properly. These activities can also be crippling, distressing or stressful.

Thus, a wide range of skills and tasks are included in the category of "goods skills". Some have these well mastered and others would need knowledge, skills and support to learn them. For all of us, these have a direct impact on our well-being, as research shows that our environment even causes us stress and anxiety and, at its worst, makes us procrastinate.

Five proven & good reasons to start reducing the amount of stuff in your home

Why should you learn goods skills?

It's worth learning the skills of goods so you can decide when and what to spend, how to fill your home and calendar, and what kind of everyday life you lead. If you don't think about what you spend, there's a really big chance that someone else will influence your purchasing decisions. For example, we are more likely to buy products recommended by influencers, because as "herd animals" it is important for us to feel like we belong.

We also buy easily to deal with our emotions, to avoid unpleasant feelings or to amuse ourselves. Buying makes us feel comfortable. This turns into a pitfall when we fill our homes with things we don't really need or don't really want to commit to. The rush of shopping lasts for a few minutes, but managing the stuff lifetime at worst.

Goods skills allow you to make your own decisions

Goods skills will help you outline your decision-making power as a consumer. You will understand the commitment you are making and the domestic workload involved in making a purchase. Even accepting free goods can be a waste of your precious time - with Goods Skills, you can see what you're committing to.

People with a knowledge of goods are able to take a more neutral and realistic approach to goods, because they can perceive cause-and-effect relationships. We are not well if we live in chaos. A well-rounded person will be able to identify the means to address the problems in the home. It also helps us understand that it is not our fault, but that we can learn skills to cope with our environment.

Why do children need to be taught goods skills?

I'm all for teaching children goods skills from an early age, because I feel that those born into the age of consumerism need to learn a rigorous toolkit to survive in today's marketing juggernaut.

Everyone should have marketing literacy, consumer knowledge, home care understanding and a basic understanding of the circular economy to make their everyday life flow. The worst fates are those of people who, through illness or some other human factor, have fallen into an ever-deepening spiral. Often, the bad spiral gets deeper and deeper, and you buy more stuff to make you feel better, for example, if that is the only way to deal with the uneasy feelings.

Children learn goods skills from the model

Children are naturally good at organising and hard-working when we give them a chance to get involved in family chores. By watching adults, a child quickly picks up good housekeeping skills. But we adults should have them first. You or any other adult don´t need not be perfect with this right now. It's enough if you want to learn and commit to learning one thing at a time, whether it's moderating your consumption, learning to declutter your belongings or setting up your own recycling system.

Help, are there any rules for decluttering toys?

As a child slowly learns to take care of his or her own possessions, to consume and to manage the obligations that come with goods, he or she will have a stronger foundation for a contented life in adulthood.

The savvy person is less likely to buy on pure wants, to understand what the purchase entails as a commitment in terms of time and well-being, and to understand the life cycle of the purchase. They can focus their energy on learning, work, fun, sport and their community, rather than struggling in a crowded daily life and a surfeit of goods, because a social media channel forced him to buy. He does not tie his identity to the things he owns, but is separate from his consumption and possessions.

Does everyone now have to learn goods skills and stop buying goods?

Not everyone needs to learn all the skills and stop buying right now. If your home feels cluttered, you've already tried to organise, maybe even to stop yourself from buying, there are arguments with your family or you don't understand why no one else cleans your home, learning more about the skills could help.

When learning new skills, it's worth starting with one that works for you: for example, commit to prudent spending (shopping list, shopping day), play a minimalist game (30 days of incremental depreciation), buy from a responsible manufacturer (no child labour or environmental toxins), clear out unnecessary clogs in your home or even one table surface, teach your child to clear the floor at night or create a recycling point in the cupboard.

If learning new skills is difficult at the moment, could you work on your thoughts? Try what it feels like to say no to ads (stop consciously looking at and reading ads), get off platforms that rely on advertising or have gamified shopping with rewards or affiliate deals, or remember how long it took you to have a shopping frenzy when you got a new item you bought for your home. Do you even remember what you bought? Do you use that item or could you live without it?

We get dopamine fixes in online shops just by clicking on the shopping cart. Try stopping there for a moment.

How to learn the skills of goods?

The wonderful thing about goods skills is that you can learn them at any time and in any situation in life. You can learn them from a model or by studying, for example, organising literature. As a professional organiser myself, I organise skills workshops where we learn skills in a safe group.

The Calm Your Home workshop by Ruuhkaton includes the necessary scientific background, conceptualisation of skills and problem formulation, concrete ways to manage household and possession work and a tailor-made plan for each participant to change their daily life with the knowledge from the workshop. The workshop will be an eye-opener and I guarantee that it will give you concrete ways to move forward in taking control of your everyday life.

My clients are smart and skilled people who don't have time for everything, as the work itself is often very demanding. I support them so that they can spend their time on the things they want to do, rather than managing unnecessary stuff.

Why is it important to learn goods skills?

Learning the skills of Goods is important because we are exposed to countless ads all the time, we are sold endless promises of all that is beautiful, but at the same time we are drowning under mountains of clutter and endless to-do lists. And we feel sick.

We do not rejoice in our homes, but are hostages to our possessions. We cannot escape, for shame prevents us from speaking. At the same time, we think that in other people's social media homes, these problems do not exist, or at least no one is there in a huff, roaring among the toys.

We have forgotten that a home could be a place to rest, a place to meet family and friends, a comfortable space that doesn't need to be constantly cleared.

With goods skills you can take back your own home and create a clutter-free everyday experience. Everyday life flow of home is one where you can fit in the right amount of work and chores, and still have the enthusiasm and energy to enjoy people, your home and your hobbies. Flow of home doesn't choke your throat and you don't need to escape it.

You can learn goods skills in workshops by Ruuhkaton, click to read more. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive a monthly mailing from me and I'll help you free of charge towards your dream home with tips from the newsletter.