In the late hours of January 1, a fire broke out in Kantamanto Market, the world’s largest secondhand clothing market, located in Accra, Ghana. Surveyors from the Or Foundation, a Ghanaian-based nonprofit organization, found that the disaster impacted over ten thousand people who made their livelihoods there, with over 60 percent of market businesses destroyed. At least two people died and hundreds more sustained injuries or illnesses from the fire and its aftermath. No official cause of the fire has been identified.
Accra might seem far away from us in the United States, but the Kantamanto Market fire has more to do with us than we’d like to admit. It’s our cast-off clothes that are bought and sold in the market, and we share some responsibility for what happens there.
This disaster comes on the heels of a growing trend in wealthy countries: decluttering. Though we assign this task a variety of names—from the “January reset” and the “New Year’s purge,” to “my underconsumption era” and “minimalism” on social media, or just “spring cleaning”—the purpose is simple: to rid ourselves of our excess stuff.
Decluttering has become more than just a practical tidying-up; it’s a mode of self-actualization. To be finally unencumbered of stuff is supposed to bring us back to our essential self. Clutter can indeed be a profound source of stress. One study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that “clutter had a negative impact on the psychological home and subject well-being [of participants].” Another study in the North American Journal of Psychology found that office clutter is linked to emotional exhaustion and stress.
If clutter is a sap on our emotional well-being, then decluttering presents itself as a restorative action. In the news and on social media, you’ll find people extolling the emotional, mental, and spiritual benefits of decluttering. After completing their decluttering cycle, some bring their unwanted clothes to donation centers or drop-off bins. Donating after decluttering can also produce positive emotions for the donators, who are convinced they are “helping those in need.”
But behind this tidy practice lies a messier reality. Not all clothing donations that Goodwill and other organizations receive will sell, due to poor quality and other factors. So these organizations find vendors, like commercial textile recyclers or apparel exporters, to buy the excess in bulk and sell to wholesalers in Africa.
Decluttering, then, isn’t solving the problem of having too much stuff, it’s just relocating that stuff. The items we dispense with still exist, and they are overwhelming other people and places. Along with other wealthy nations, the United States is constantly sending its excesses—from used textiles and vehicles to electronic waste—to the Global South. In 2022, the United States exported one billion dollars in used clothing, making it the largest exporter of used clothing in the world. Places like Kantamanto receive these exports, where they become Ghanaians’ burden.
Today, Ghana and other African countries have a bustling secondhand clothing (SHC) industry, largely due to economic liberalization programs in the eighties and nineties that eliminated protective tariffs and created global competitors for local apparel producers. As factories closed and local production dwindled, citizens adapted to integrate Global North imports in their daily lives and labor. Every day, Kantamanto processes around 25 million secondhand garments, thanks to the labor of retailers, traders, and other workers. The nearly thirty thousand people who work in Kantamanto have created livelihoods around repurposing, recycling, and recirculating clothing castoffs.
Yet certain factors complicate this work. Elizabeth Ricketts, cofounder of the Or Foundation, explains that “retailers [at Kantamanto] take out loans with 35 percent interest rates to purchase the bales of clothing that have been shipped from all over the world.” These bales are frequently filled with dirty, damaged, and discarded clothes. Unable to move unwanted stock, many retailers accrue debt. As fast-fashion corporations increasingly choose cheaper fabrics to cut production costs, the quality of secondhand clothes declines, increasing the likelihood of unsaleable stock for Kantamanto retailers.
Our clutter accumulates in the clothing imports imposed on the Global South. A December 2024 report by the United States Slow Fashion Caucus showed that the rate of textile waste grew 50 percent between 2000 and 2018, likely fueled by a sharp rise in clothing production and consumption. With secondhand textile exports on the rise, our impositions on the Global South show no signs of stopping. When I see footage of TikTokers celebrating their decluttering sessions and marching garbage bags full of stuff to Goodwill, I think of the Ghanaian female head porters (who are called kayayei in Ghana), who carry one-hundred-pound bales of used clothing on their heads across great distances for little pay. I think of how my past clothing donations have tangibly weighed these women down. I feel dread, knowing that this trend—and the inevitable trend cycle of filling one’s now-decluttered home with “minimalist” stuff—further burdens these laborers’ communities.
Despite these trends, I do think that the desire to declutter is a good thing: it is a sign that the allure of unbridled excess is wearing thin, that we want out from the constant churn of stuff. The Christian tradition extols the desire to live without excess as a virtue and the desire to give to others as a great good. The problem isn’t wanting to pare down or give away, but that the way we’re doing it—through our clutter-catharsis “giving”—has been harmful to our global neighbors.
Kantamanto illustrates the need to pair our behaviors with solidaristic action—otherwise, decluttering becomes another inward-facing task that shifts harm elsewhere. Pope St. John Paul II urged Christians to conceive of solidarity as “not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people,” but rather “a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good.”
This solidarity can take many forms. Since the fire, the Or Foundation pledged over $1 million to the initial rebuilding stage of Kantamanto and directed further donations to their relief fund. While the Or Foundation works on the ground to provide PPE for market laborers during cleanup as well as building materials, supplies, and financial support to devastated community members, people beyond Ghana can contribute to the cleanup effort through direct financial donations. The tax write-off earned from a Goodwill donation drop-off, for example, can become a small donation from any decluttering enthusiast.
Solidarity can also mean partaking in targeted pressure campaigns against apparel brands and corporations like Amazon and SHEIN to force them to adhere to ethical policy and business practices. Joining pressure campaigns can have tangible impacts, with SHEIN and the Or Foundation reaching an Extended Producer Responsibility Fund Agreement in 2022 after a global push to increase producer accountability. Individually, it can involve serious reflection about our growing commitments to “stuff” and our stunted commitments to people and planet. Detaching from constant clutter cycles can free up time to invest in local and global solidarity efforts.
Since the Kantamanto Market fire, the Or Foundation has distributed $1.525 million to over nine thousand community members, mobilized team members and community volunteers to distribute relief payments, met with market leadership groups to support rebuilding efforts and infrastructure improvements, and more. As the Global South contends with the impacts of textile waste, the Global North has an opportunity to reckon with its responsibility to the people it has burdened—an opportunity it can’t pass up.
