Dwelling requires the capacity to both discard and store stuff; in some cases, even to conceal things so they can be found anew, yet differently. With or without things, that is the wicked question. Perhaps we need both, and to study the conduits and stages in between. The preposition “with,” implies responsibility and relation, making home an ongoing negotiation between continuity and loss.

The interest in more mindful consumerist practices has been increasing over the last few years, fact that is evidenced by a growing number of publications, podcasts, and social media groups on the topic. We have investigated whether having fewer things provides the opportunity to engage more intensely with them and deepen relationship with the items we chose to keep.

Nevertheless, alternative forms of consumption do not follow a coherent pattern, since people might downshift in one domain and consume conspicuously in another domain. Therefore, actual ways of pondering the line between essential products for life and those that are not deserve a nuanced ethnographic understanding.

This special issue reframes domestic material culture through the dual lens of attachment and detachment, or living with and without things. The article positions acts of sorting, discarding, storing, and divesting not as marginal or utilitarian household routines but as core practices of remembering, forgetting, and identity-making.

KEYWORDS: : Material culture; Domestic ecologies; Living with less; Hoarding; Discard; Sorting Consumption.

0. With and without Things. An Introduction. Francisco Martínez and Tomás Errázuriz

1. To Inhabit, to Build, to Die. Tomás Errázuriz

2. Store It in a Cool Place: Basements as Social Machines. Francisco Martínez

3. Lose, remain, regain: biographic objects and forced migration. Julia Sonnleitner

4. The Minimalist Universe of Things. Living with Less in German Speaking Households. Heike Derwanz

5. Affective Clutter: Three Viewpoints to Lived Objects that Create Discomfort at Home. Anna Kajander & Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto

6. Kitchenification: Oblivion, Obsolescence and Sweeping Renovations in Danish Homes. Kirsten Marie Raahauge

7. Biodesign at Home: An Ethnographic Account of Lively Spaces and Things. Katherine Pfeiffer

Commentary: Becoming with Things. Katie Kilroy-Marat

Commentary: Without Living Things. Patrick Laviolette

Commentary: Living with Things 15 years on. Nicky Gregson