Jump directly to the Content
Jump directly to the Content

Sermon Illustrations

Home > Sermon Illustrations

Americans' Stuff and Junk Obsession

Alison Stewart, a former reporter and news anchor, spent three years investigating America's unhealthy obsession with stuff. Her book, Junk: Digging Through America's Love Affair With Stuff, examines the private lives and profitable businesses associated with our craving for consumer goods. Stewart explains that junk business is big business:

Self-storage has its own association and lobbying group because it is big business, generating more than $24 billion in revenues in 2014. The United States is home to reportedly 48,500 to 52,000 self-storage units. That's about 2.3 billion square feet of storage. It is a business that has been called recession resistant by the Wall Street Journal.

Reality TV shows focusing on junk took off in the early 2000's. Stewart put together a list of such shows broadcast between 2003 and the end of 2015. She writes: "The real tension that exists between the desire to buy and own, positioned against the stress created by the acquisitions, makes perfect sense for nonscripted television." Here's a partial list of stuff-based reality TV shows: American Pickers, Auction Hunters, Auction Kings, Buried Treasure, Flea Market Flip, Hoarders, Junk Gypsies, Junkyard Wars, Pawn Stars, Picker Sisters, Storage Wars, and its spinoff Storage War Texas.

Related Sermon Illustrations

Americans Running Out of Room for Possessions

According to the Self Storage Association, a trade group charged with monitoring such things, the country now possesses about 1.9 billion square feet of personal storage space outside ...

[Read More]

"Affluenza": Shopping Fever

Affluenza is the popular, hour-long PBS documentary about consumerism and its harmful effects on the family, the community, and the environment. In this particular scene, the narrator ...

[Read More]