Use the Good Stuff
The impulse to tuck away our most valuable possessions promotes a culture of consumption and keeps us from truly enjoying what we have
When I graduated from college, my sister made me a quilt. Over the two decades that followed, it has kept me warm in more than a dozen apartments spread over three states. Now it can usually be found on my son’s bed, though sometime in the not-so-distant future, it may need to be retired — the edges are frayed, the fabric is thinning and it’s starting to fall apart.
When I lamented this to my sister recently, suggesting that maybe I should have stored it in the closet, she disagreed. “It makes me so happy that it’s been used and loved,” she said. “That’s what a quilt is for.”
There’s a sentimental impulse to care for our best things by tucking them away and protecting them from the rigors of daily life. This thinking keeps us from truly enjoying the things that we have, while also encouraging us to consume more and more. Forget special occasions — use the good stuff every day.
Recently global supply chain issues coupled with inflation have sparked a conversation about just how much stuff Americans buy. Most of these stories have been framed with the idea that we straight up have too much, and it’s hard to argue with that. It’s just a new version of an old conversation. “To many observers, clutter reflects the mind-set of the modern household — overburdened, disorganized and compulsive,” a 2005 Associated Press story opined. “To others, clutter is a broader symbol of a ravenous culture dependent on easy credit, piling up debt and consuming a lion’s share of the world’s resources without considering the consequences.”
As we wait for container ships to unload their cargo, it’s time to shop from our closets and china cupboards and celebrate the stuff we have instead of buying more. That one pair of underwear you only wear on special occasions? Put them in the rotation and feel fancy every time you wear them. Eat taco Tuesday off of Great Aunt Edna’s best china. If truly it’s too beautiful to use, or if you don’t want to risk the dishwasher and hand washing on a weeknight is just not happening, repurpose it into an actual art object and mount it to the wall.
There are other objects like the quilt in my house. A porcelain soup tureen that came to the U.S. in a steamer trunk with my great-great grandmother. A cut crystal glass bowl from another grandmother. A lovely cashmere sweater that seems to attract small, sticky hands — all of these have seemed too precious for daily use to me. Buoyed by my sister’s good advice, I’ve put them all to use. The crystal bowl is filled with spare Lego pieces that I find scattered around the house. My kids know that if they don’t put them away the bowl will be summarily emptied into the trash. (Parents, think of throwing away or donating the odd bits of plastic toys, insignificant stuffies, special rocks and other child detritus around your home as small pleasure in the same vein as using your best stuff every day. It’s amazing.) The sweater I started wearing after researching how to clean it properly. And the tureen’s delicacy I press into service, hiding things I don’t want my kids to mess with in it, on the top shelf of a bookcase, having explained to them that it’s very old and fragile.
Would it be a bummer if any of these got broken or ruined? Sure. But truly, it would also be a bit of a relief.
There’s a certain survivalist mentality that comes to stocking the cupboards, especially as winter approaches and supply chain issues continue. It makes sense to buy beans, rice, and toilet paper in bulk (unless you still have excess from the first panic buying stage of the pandemic, in which case, use them up). Those special occasion bottles of wine and liquor you’ve never quite known what to do with? Drink it.
If the thought of cracking an expensive bottle on a random Saturday night makes you nervous, read this Instagram post by the writer Rebecca Woolf, about a bottle of Dom Perignon that had already been in her fridge for four years, waiting for the right moment to open, when her husband was diagnosed with terminal cancer. “He was saving it for something big, he said. Something REALLY special, but in the end, what does that even mean?,” she writes. “So many of us hold onto our proverbial ‘good bottles,’ saving them for THE RIGHT TIME only to ask ourselves, when the time does come, if it’s right ENOUGH?”
Today is right enough. Get out the good china. Light the $35 candle you never use because it’s a $35 candle. Open the bottle. Enjoy it all.
