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300,000 things

In a list of 15 stats that show Americans are drowning in stuff, I got stuck on number one.

There are 300,000 items in the average American home

Can that possibly be? At first I thought there was an accidental extra zero. The LA times article the number comes from says "from paper clips to ironing boards" so i guess that counts absolutely everything. Every lego piece, every crayon, every sock and every spoon.

Even taking that into account, 0.3 million items seems an awful lot. I'm tempted to do a count (or at least a detailed estimate) to see how we compare. How many do you think you own?

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