We invest emotion and memories in our possessions, giving them deep meaning, but that doesn't necessarily make us happy – it may drive us slightly mad
"HAVE nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This was a golden rule for those struggling to furnish or redecorate their homes, offered by William Morris, a 19th-century British textile designer.
Insightful as it sounds, Morris's advice turns out to be rather impractical. As we all know, our relationship to the things we own goes far beyond utility and aesthetics. Simply put, we love our stuff. Morris's contemporary, the psychologist William James, had a notion why. Our possessions, he argued, define who we are: "Between what a man calls me and what he simply calls mine the line is difficult to draw."
As well as being useful, our possessions represent our extended selves. They ...
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