material girl

[metaphortunate]

Was talking on Twitter about how unfortunate it is that retail therapy totally works. :D: Only saving grace is that, at least for me, it's so much more helpful/satisfying if I'm filling a real need with whatever I'm buying than if I'm just impulse picking up some random crap.

For example, last week I bought a watch and a desperately needed new pair of work trousers. Behold, getting dressed in the morning is easier at least one day a week, and that is valuable to me. And the watch: I know people say watches are obsolete because now everyone has smart phones, and all I can say is, these must be people who don't walk around outside a lot or take public transportation. There are at least a couple of times almost every single day when I want to know what time it is and I really don't want to pull out my cell phone. Now I can!

In general, I am honestly a big fan of material things, as long as they are the right material things. Material things that are sort of what I want and sort of not just pile up in the house and make me miserable. Material things that are perfect give me a shot of genuine happiness every time I experience them or use them. Like:

• The gorgeous coat hooks on our stairs that Mr. E and I picked out together and he installed one day to surprise me and which mean that we have a completely convenient place to put jackets and hats as soon as we come in the house and which, incidentally, are great looking
  
• Chanel Cuir de Russie, which smells like old lady right when I put it on and within about 20 minutes has transformed into this rich, smooth, work-of-art leather aroma, so that for the rest of the day, no matter what kind of mess I look like, I smell like subtle, complex, recondite pleasures; and it makes my entire day better
  
• My purse, which took me forever to find the exact right one, and which is exactly big enough for my wallet, coin purse, sunglasses, phone, iPod, headphones, small pocketknife, tissues, hand sanitizer, pen, lipstick and enough room to pull one thing out without knocking everything else out, and not one bit bigger or heavier or more awkward
  
• Our drinking glasses, which are blue and have this smooth texture which is a small pleasure to touch every time I get a glass of water
  
• Dried persimmons, for obvious reasons!

What are your favorite material things?

Comments

[brooksmoses]

I don't know about "favorite" exactly, but I have been doing a bit more retail therapy than I probably ought to be recently, and the summation is that eBay is a foul and unfortunately effective temptation. Because one decides to buy a thing, and then is tempted to go back and check whether it has stayed bought or not, and one must also eventually go back and pay for it, and there are all these opportunities at which one can be presented with more similar things to decide to buy, and there is no end to it. (Especially if one has learned how to save searches!)

The things that I have lately been buying have been nearly-new Brooks Brothers shirts (if I need new shirts, and when I started this I did, I might as well buy really good ones, given that cheap new ones in stores and basically any used ones on eBay are all around the same price), and ties (which I am unlikely to ever wear, but shiny!), and old color slides from the 1950s that are artistically interesting and/or a look into that time that looks pretty much like a modern photograph instead of the typical black-and-white ones of the time. In particular, I tend to think of steam locomotives as old history, and it's nifty to have photographs of them as part of everyday life that mostly just looks like everyday life with the trees and mountains looking like the trees and mountains that I know.

I also bought a good used slide scanner for scanning the slides, which I should get set up soon. The fact that I haven't yet tells you something about the process of buying the slides, and the balance between intention and actuality that's occurring there....

[metaphortunate]

Uh oh. That does make eBay sound horribly appealing. :)