While my kids have been at camp, my most enthusiastic summer activity is actively getting rid of all the stuff the kids have hoarded, been gifted, or have gone to disuse over the last many months. There’s something cathartic about hauling stacks of dozens of books, bins of old blocks, and bags of clothes down to the giveaway pile in our building’s basement.
Through this process, I’ve also thought about our most-used household goods, the small objects that are used day-in and day-out. Most of our prized objects are things someone has made, things passed down, or things earned. Such as: Julian’s hilariously grumpy ceramics from after school, Jacob’s film awards, my mom’s lithographs and etchings, Ada’s tiny handmade clay food collection, family photos tucked in the corners of frames. There’s a reason most of it is actually non-reproducible.
What does it say about capitalism, John asks, that we have money and want to spend it but we can’t find anything worth buying? We’re on our way home from furniture store, again. We almost bought something called a credenza, but then John opened the drawers and discovered that it wasn’t made to last.
I think there are limits, I say, to what mass production can produce.
…writes Eula Biss, whose tome about work, stuff, ownership, capitalism— Having and Being Had—is one of the books I think of most often.
I think about it primarily in relationship to object consumption, and our relationship to abundance, usefulness, and our sense of value. I think about it because of Bezos and Elon, non-stop advertisement, friction-less buying, the mall that is social media, Prime Day mania, and the endless cycle of getting and purging so many of us loop through.
Below is my list of a handful of items, mostly mundane and acquired without too much thought, that I do find quite useful. I list these as a reluctant shopping list—and perhaps more as an ask to pause and consider the limits, really, of stuff.