Someone emailed me the following info, and I'd like to find out more
details:  ie WHEN and WHERE did the story appear?  Who is the student
and at what university or other educational institution??  I don't
speak the Finnish language, so would need a resource in English,
although even knowing the name of the publication in Finnish I guess
would be of some help.  I'm trying to get more hard factual details
behind this most interesting piece!  Finding out how to contact either
the student or the author of the piece would be a big bonus. Thank
you.

WHAT'S YOUR CLUTTER RATIO? The Finnish press recently reported a
fascinating story about an art student who decided to inventory every
object in her 2500 square foot home and present it as her final
thesis. To do this she used traditional archaeological methods and
discovered she owned a total of 6,126 objects. The most interesting
part was her analysis of how often she used each object: Objects never
used - 1457 Objects used less frequently than once a year - 2209
Objects used once or twice a year - 1411 Objects used every month -
587 Objects used every week - 401 Objects used every day - 61 Put
another way, 24% of the objects were never used at all and a further
59% were used only once or twice per year. That’s a ratio of 83%
clutter! Of the remaining 17%, only 1% of the objects were used every
day. Now, I’ve never been to Finland but I don’t expect Finnish
clutter hoarding habits are very different to the rest of the human
race. Let’s suppose this art student was an extreme example. Even if
she had twice as much clutter as a normal person, that would still
mean that more than 40% of any home consists of junk.

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Clarification of Question by peaceonearth-ga on 03 Nov 2002 01:37 PST

This is more of a query rather than clarification, but it's been a
week and a
half now, and no one has "picked up" my question.  I purposely put in
for $10
because you said most $10 questions get answered.  Is this really a
tough one?
Should I just withdraw it?  Maybe if this isn't working out, I should
try another route.  Let me know how I can get this into action--or if
I should just
remove it. Thanks.

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Clarification of Question by peaceonearth-ga on 05 Nov 2002 21:20 PST

I just added a clarification under comments; maybe it should have been
here instead...go to comments to see!! THanks.

Where did you see this excerpt? Perhaps you can trace the origin of
the story through whoever wrote what you typed above.

Peaceonearth --

You can rest assured that a number of researchers have looked at this
question.

I spent some time on this one as the following search terms would
float to the top if the news was reported in English-language
publications:
Finnish + clutter
"clutter ratio"

Checking another private database that covers academic studies
revealed nothing.  Checking back to 1986 on Proquest, a private
database covering key American newspapers, reveals nothing.

Because we can't find it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.  But this
account has the earmarks of an urban legend:
*  interesting facts
*  a distant and vague source
*  vague placement in time

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Thanks for the clarification on why this is proving difficult.  Don't
know if this will help at all:  my source for this info was the owner
of the website www.spaceclearing.com.  I am on her regular group email
list. (She teaches feng shui and space clearing, and I notice she has
a trainee who lives in Finland--Mari Porma--but no way is listed to
contact her, since she is not yet a fully accredited practitioner.)  I
tried emailing my question to the gemeral website email address, but
got the following automatic response: "Thanks for your e-mail. Karen
receives a tremendous volume of email each day and it's simply
impossible for her to reply to individual inquiries any more. However
she does publish a selection of questions and answers on the Ask Karen
Kingston section of her website and we've forwarded your e-mail to her
for possible inclusion." (Chances of being included there would be
very small, I'm sure).  Don't know if this helps at all, but thought
I'd give it my best shot!--Thanks for your efforts,  peaceonearth-ga