Thinking about my relationship to stuff
on this cursed "holiday"
Since I work Sunday through Thursday writing the next morning's show, Sunday is my Monday, which means that last night as everyone else was contemplating the post-Thanksgiving "Sunday Scaries" I was already deep in Cyber Monday world. (As an aside, working a day ahead means I never know what day it is, because I'm always writing about "today" which is actually tomorrow, and "yesterday" which is today, and for some reason this has a ripple effect such that in casual conversation sometimes I have to pause and think very hard about what month it is. Anyway.) As Cyber Monday regularly breaks its own record for e-commerce sales, Cyber Monday 2024 is expected to be the biggest online shopping day in American history. Forecasts for today's sales put them over $13 billion.
That's. A lot. Of stuff.
I'm never not thinking about my relationship to stuff. I know a lot of folks my age can relate to this, because it's a time when we either have aging parents or growing families or both. My mom, who has things like generations' worth of Tiffany china and sets of silver, is an elite stuff-haver. But she's reached the point in life when she's constantly trying to offload stuff to me or my brother. It is impossible to go home without being asked if you'd like to take some serving platters back to Brooklyn on the train (you wouldn't, but thanks). It is, admittedly, often really nice stuff on offer, although there's plenty of junk amid the jewels and I don't always know which is which. Grabbing a bowl from the kitchen cabinet after Thanksgiving, I noticed one in the stack was broken into pieces. I hadn't been the one to break it, but I still had to psych myself up to deliver the bad news. "Oh, don't worry," she said. "That came from H-Mart."
When I tell you I breathed a sigh of relief like no sigh has e'er been sighed before...
Back in Brooklyn, my mother-in-law had arrived with Costco-sized quantities of some favorite foods, a sweet gesture that unfortunately always causes issues for me as the apartment's CEO of Tetris. Eyeing the remaining seaweed packs from the carton she'd brought on her last visit earlier this fall, she tried to launch a new carton of seaweed packs on top of that one in an overhead storage space otherwise known as the Jenga tower of cartons wobbling threateningly on top of the refrigerator. "You guys need more space," she chuckled, which I don't disagree with, but also, people who live in less than 1,000 square feet don't shop at Costco. Not wanting to bite the hand that feeds me 32-packs of unrequested chestnuts, I kept this thought to myself.
At least edible gifts are ephemeral, if they are in quantities such that one can realistically consume them. Every time I finish a jar of peanut butter and hand it to the dog to "prepare it for recycling," I do a silent celebration for the peanut butter jar-sized space that has just opened up in the pantry. I will need to buy a new jar of peanut butter posthaste, of course, but not before I've taken one other jar off of the box of pasta on which it was balanced, just to give it a taste of shelf life.
It's a privilege to have everything you need, and I recognize how lucky I am that I didn't buy anything on Black Friday or Cyber Monday because I don't need anything. "Need" is subjective, of course. The handle on our microwave broke off ages ago and thus the door must be carefully pried open with two hands, but the microwave still performs its only job, so I feel no need to replace it. The air conditioner is duct-taped together in a manner that is most aesthetically unappealing, but which only bothers me when we have guests over and I'm trying to look at the apartment "through their eyes." You know those yard signs that got popular after the 2016 election? "In this house, we believe science is real, black lives matter, women's rights are human rights," etc. I'd add "things don't get replaced just for the sake of upgrading until they literally break down and can't even be fixed with duct tape." I think of it as the anti-iPhone mentality. It's my personal protest against a consumer culture that has convinced us we need new phones just because a different model has "launched."
iDigress. For my compatriots in a constant battle with stuff, the best things you can buy for yourself or as gifts are either consumable, as I wrote in this edible advent calendar roundup, or non-physical, like streaming deals and subscriptions. Supporting journalism is a nice place to put your dollars, any time of year. At the height of the Marie Kondo craze, I wrote about the periodicals cluttering my apartment in a piece called “Marie Kondo is not for me,” inspired by a friend who threw out all her wardrobe staples and then asked to borrow mine.
I cast a critical eye around my living room, landing on the magazine stack of shame™. At this point, the stack is making itself useful as a de facto coffee table, a fact which both delights and horrifies me. But each copy of Bon Appetit has been lovingly dog-eared with recipes I absolutely 100% am going to cook soon, and each issue of The New Yorker is full of articles that will make me smarter when I read them and thus able to hold court in a more brilliant manner at dinner parties. As for the New York Magazines, those contain the subscription code I need to link my online access, and I am eagerly looking forward to the time I do that so I can put an end to the daily scolding I get on the website telling me “You have reached your article limit!” despite the fact that I am, indeed, a paying subscriber. Sigh.
Five years later, my devotion hasn’t changed, but if nothing else, I can feel proud of the fact that I am now logged in on nymag.com. I’m avoiding it today, though— it’s full of Cyber Monday sales.
Stuff!!! The funniest part to me is how I somehow feel like I need more stuff in order to feel like I have less stuff. Like if I just had the right way to organize it then it wouldn’t feel so stuffy. It’s a scam! No wore stuff! Except for more books of course 🧏🏼♀️