Carol, my partner, is an undisputed master of buying things through yard sales, thrift stores, craigslist and other online sellers, antique and junk stores, etc. I follow her lead, and even I have been known to pick through things left by the roadside for trash pick-up (a replacement for the days when we lived in a town with a dump where we could go “antiquing”).

She found a new place to buy junk — er, antiques here in New Bedford, in the basement of an old mill building about a mile north of the downtown. She was talking with the owner of the place, and she said, There’s no reason to buy anything new any more. He said, Yes, absolutely. Because, she said, people have so much stuff you can get pretty much whatever you want used. He nodded vigorously.

Yup. Here in North America, we have reached critical mass when it comes to personal belongings. Carol and I (mostly Carol) have furnished our apartment almost entirely with yard sale items, junk, low-end antiques, stuff saved from the trash, things given to us by family or friends, things we have owned for decades. It’s a fashion statement, a design ethic. There are even books about junk chic. It’s a cultural trend to watch — fashionable, culturally creative, and subversive of the consumer culture, all at the same time.

Or maybe that’s just how we dress up the fact that we decorate with junk.