What if all our stuff had to be laid out in the open? What if everything we owned had to be on display, stacked on shelves without doors, hung on our walls, dangled from our ceilings?

What if we had no closets or cellars or attics or storage units that could gobble up, chug down and otherwise conceal - from ourselves as well as others - all that we had?

How would that affect our consumer appetites? How would that change what we bought and kept? (Confession: I say this as I prepare today to go to a local consignment shop to buy a book tote. My defense is that 1. the “new” one I am to buy is old, used, and would otherwise be tossed and trashed, and 2. my old one is tearing and leaving tracings of its innards all over my sweaters. I suppose you could argue that I should just use one of my canvas grocery bags. They are serviceable and large and sturdy enough. And you would no doubt be right. But, well, that just doesn’t seem, um, stylish enough.)

A blog I saw says that the Amish do not have closets. They hang their clothes on hooks on their wall. When the hooks are full, their wardrobe is complete. (And yes, I suppose it does depend on how many hooks they put up but the picture showed one neat row of seven hooks with one outfit on each hook. I trust it is genuine.)

Forty years ago, biofeedback burst on the scene allowing us to be more aware of our bodies and how we could control what were (up til then) considered uncontrollable physiological events affecting stress, heart rate, tension, etc.

More recently, we are being told that smart meters, which give us real-time feedback in home energy-use, will, like biofeedback, help make us better people. (Okay, not really. But we are told that the meters can help us figure out where our energy waste is which in turn will allow us to cut our use, our emissions, and our bills. And billions of dollars of stimulus funds were allotted to this, though the implementation is becoming more controversial than was anticipated.)

But what about general consumption? What about all those things we buy everyday? What if all our closets and drawers and boxes and bins and cellars were suddenly to spill out their innards, revealing to all, especially us - their owners - just how much we actually possessed. Somehow I think I would be horrified!

Which is why, perhaps, I am so enchanted with the wall of mugs and glasses that graces this tidy kitchen. It gently reminds me that perhaps “fullness” is closer than it appears, that our possessions should grace and not just fill our lives, that few items well-used are nubbed with the rubbings of everyday and so become carriers of our memories, surrogate diaries that we drink with our morning tea.

(Photo: shelves in my Cambridge kitchen)