Questioning current attitudes towards “keeping” and their implications on longer product lifetimes

To prolong product lifetimes, consumer behaviour in relation to everyday possessions is likely to evolve. Consumers are progressively expected to take part in efforts to prevent waste and keep everyday goods in conditions that permit reuse, repair and repurposing. This implies a variety of forms of shorter and longer term keeping not yet sufficiently represented in existing product consumption phase models. While periods of passivity or transition where products are kept awaiting repair, second lives or divestment are inherent in todays’ product relations, attitudes to keeping things are ambiguous. This article aims to contribute to better understanding of behavioural aspects of the passive phases of thing-relations and what may influence attitudes to keeping stuff. We discuss keeping and related constructs such as clutter, product hibernation, abandonment and sedimentation to better understand the diversity of passive object relations and the issues they raise. Design-oriented ethnographic research into different attitudes towards keeping in the context of everyday product relations highlights the ambiguity around the way we keep things. Six main emerging themes are identified: oppression, coping/questioning, projection, conscious use, reassurance and managing visibility. These diverse, co-existing themes illustrate the need to better understand the fluid, unstable and personal nature of passive product relations.