I find optimization culture fascinating because it does NOT resonate with me very much. I am extremely a "good enough" sort of person (maybe to a fault?) and do not feel that I am skilled at decorating, organizing, etc. I've been trying ever since the pandemic to actually have a cute Zoom background and I still sort of don't! It's like a language I just don't speak. But I live with two people who are more attuned to optimization culture, which makes it very hard to just, like, buy a rug or a coffee maker or whatever. I recently just BOUGHT A CONSUMER GOOD that I had not researched AT ALL, and my husband joked, "How will you know if it was the best one??" and I said, "I don't actually care if it is!"
I’m with you on this. I know people like this—even people close to me—but have never understood it. I’d be really interested in reading a piece that gets into where this split comes in. I personally just like things simple—not optimized or staged for Instagram simple, just as low-maintenance as possible. “Is it easy to clean?” is about as optimal as I can get, and shopping for anything exhausts me. I do like things to be as reusable/recyclable as possible, which is part of why I don’t quite get trying to find the “best” thing. Stuff breaks and wears out all the time. I bought my spouse a coffee maker last year using Wirecutter’s guidance because he’s really into gadgets and optimizing, but I’ve been using the same plastic Melitta cone filter to make my coffee for something like 30 years and it works just fine for me! (Granted, it doesn’t keep coffee hot, but when I use my spouse’s coffee maker, I find I drink more coffee than my body actually wants anyway.)
Years ago I heard someone talk about maximizers and satisfizers: the first are the people who do all the research, who often can’t take a decision until they feel they’ve exhausted all the options; the second are the people who are more in the good enough-camp. My partner is a maximizer, I am a satisfizer: understanding that difference in the way in which we approach situations and make decisions (planning for travel, buying a house) has been really helpful. Booking trips would be considerably more painful if my partner were to do it, we would be living in a less nice house if we’d followed my satisifzer impulses, so often it balances out.
That is true. I think our main issue is that I get frustrated at how long it can take to decide on something, and he gets bummed that I'm not more enthusiastically engaged in, say, bathroom tile choices!
I saw these terms a few years back and it really put my relationship into context :) I’m the maximizer, she’s the satisfizer but I am trying to pick my spots as far as the maximization goes. Funny that you mention travel planning since I’m now planning a vacation and walking that fine line between making the most of the trip, leaving spaces for exploration, and being flexible to change plans if needed/wanted.
This is so affirming and really resonates! Except thankfully for me my partner is even less of an optimizer than I am so we are aligned in our good enough life. I will admit that I do use Wirecutter when there are a lot of options and I feel totally lost as to how to decide. But the running joke in our family is that any time you go out of your way to find the Wirecutter pick it will break and you will end up buying whatever random thing you can find in stock at the store and it will work great (or, you know, well enough).
Ha, are you me? I don't think I've ever really "researched" a Consumer Good -- at most, I compare reviews of the least expensive versions of something I need, or ask a friend more savvy about it (like when I got my first laptop back in 2011) which they think is more likely to annoy me.
It probably helps that I prefer the "worse" versions of some things, too? Like bedsheets -- everyone talks about higher thread count, but I want ones with edges you can fold into sharp-ish corners and trace along your fingers (a weird thing I have constantly done since I was little), which means I want the cheap cotton sheets because the higher the thread count the less you can make them corner-y...
Yes! There are lots of things where I'm like "store brand is fine" or "this cheap version is actually pretty great." (Looking at you, Malt-O-Meal Fruity Dino Bites!)
I honestly think working in an under-resourced newsroom for 13 years firmly divorced me from the notion of a "one best way," and helped me cultivate the ability to make a quick decision and simply forward with whatever was possible in that particular moment. However, 0/10 do not recommend that as a life path!
Being cheap and lazy helps, too. Frugality and laziness are my guide stars, the twin pillars through which all my life decisions must pass 🙃 If you can keep "cheap and lazy" in view at all times, you may find that researching the ONE TRUE COFFEE MAKER, and spending money on it, is perhaps too hard and expensive and you would rather spend that time napping, or eating Cheetos, or rewatching "New Girl"
Amen to being cheap and lazy! I am both. Our current coffeemaker is an under-$30 Mr. Coffee bought at Walmart last October when the old one broke. It makes the coffee, which is all I ask of it, and has not overflowed or done anything else untoward.
Folgers in the drip coffee maker is the best! It is my lifeblood.
My parents were telling me about the graduation party they went to yesterday and how there was no simple cake and punch like days of yore. It was all “chocolate covered strawberries” and “bespoke churros” and other more “original” fare. I said “I can’t wait until my kids graduate and we have cake and punch and people think it’s so quirky and original!”
I am co-planning a high school graduation party with a mom I had never met until our kids decided they would team up for a party. Could totally have been an optimization nightmare! Instead it’s been AWESOME! She’s ordering Chipotle, I’m getting drinks. Her kid doesn’t like cake so she’s making candy grab bags with her daughter. Boom! That’s it. I adored her instantly!
I can relate to this, but from the opposite direction. As a pharmacist, optimization and precision do matter and in most cases there is one right way. In the past, I brought this approach home with me. I definitely worried about a lot of things that weren't worth my time. I've found writing really brain balancing — keeping my brain from getting stuck in a "one best way" mode. And making time for doing something fun also helps me shift my focus to the bigger picture so I can see how "cheap and lazy" are better "guide stars" for many decisions I make — probably most decisions, but I'm not quite there yet.
May 28, 2023·edited May 28, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
Ten years ago, we bought a modest house built the 60s on 8 fallow acres in a short sale. We did not remodel it. We put a new coat of paint on the inside, called it done, and started planting an orchard and flower field on the outside. We do not have the latest coffee maker. We do not have gray vinyl floors. We do not have a cold plunge.
Instead, we built a thriving ecosystem. We grow 5 tons of food a year. I wake up to birdsong. There are jack rabbits and wild turkeys wandering around my front yard right now. I see dozens of my neighbors here every week. My house is filled with flowers. All that, for less than the cost of the average home remodel :)
Following you now! :) My mom is a farmer and it's not my thing at all but it brings her so much joy and vitality. It also legit keeps her blood pressure steady--when she misses days on the farm, it goes up. I'm so happy she has that outlet. And I'm so happy people like you exist! (Because despite descending from generations of farmers I have a black thumb. LOL)
Aw, that's wonderful. Not everyone should be a farmer for sure! We need teachers and doctors and lovers and dreamers and all of the breadth of humanity.
FWIW, my first "garden" was on a fire escape in Manhattan over a sex shop. I killed 90% of what I planted. Now, some 35 years later, I only kill around 10% :)
Wow, this sounds like a dream! There’s something about nature, and also historic structures like farmhouses, that helps us resist the optimization. Nature is perfectly ok with “good enough”, and that old farmhouse with the crooked doorways is ok with good enough too.
Someone else might have talked about this somewhere else in the thread, but I wonder if part of the optimization thing is that we feel scarce on resources. I know that for me, I aggressively research most purchases over $50 because I don’t want to waste my limited money (even though you could argue that all the time researching is its own form of waste). But nature is all about abundance and adaptation. When your farmhouse was built, it might not have been an abundant time for the builder, or maybe it was, but maybe there wasn’t a sense of scarcity in the way many of us feel now, about physical and abstract resources.
We bought our 120+ yo farmhouse in 2004 at an auction “as-is” the day after first learning it existed. We moved in 30 days later and now, 19 years (and 3 kids and 4 dogs) later have made almost no aesthetic improvements. We have fixed things that needed fixing (and replaced the septic system, added an outdoor wood burner and are replacing the roof this summer) and added a window to a windowless wall and doors to several doorless rooms, but we still have 6 kinds of fake wood paneling and walls with 8 layers of wallpaper, and 5 kinds of flooring on the first floor and one teeny tiny bathroom for 5 of us. No one who has ever visited our home understands our complete lack of desire to update things or make it more aesthetically pleasing (to them). But we feel that our money is better spent on things we need and experiences and paying down debt and just living. Our house is our home and it’s quirky and unique and we have our gorgeous land and solitude and so many people don’t understand why that’s enough for us. You perfectly described why most home-based social media makes me feel horrible and why I avoid reading almost anything about home renovations - it makes me feel like I’m not enough because I’m okay leaving things the way they are. Thank you for this piece.
Writing this out and re-reading it makes me realize how much shame can be induced in today's upper middle class society around aesthetics and social media worthy living spaces. It saddens me to think that so many of us are made to feel this way when simply having a roof over our heads is so much more than so so so many fellow Americans have. When I see old homes being demolished so owners can build brand new ones, I mourn the buildings that weren't deemed worthy of modern society when they would still be perfectly fine for so many. I obviously have a LOT of thoughts and a lot to unpack surrounding this topic........
I wish more people were like you. Useless renovations are terrible for the environment and frankly, I think that aesthetically, they suck. Give me the quirky, colourful, unrenovated home anytime!
I've never met someone who regretted NOT dumping a bunch of money into their home. Besides the money, you can't get the time back either. (Full disclosure: I say this as someone who once made that mistake.) Your priorities make total sense!
Honestly it was such a revelation to me too that shame is the emotion I was feeling! I decided to take the summer off of Instagram and I suspect it will make a big difference
We like to ponder a lot of the designs and figure out who made some of the choices! We know the last owners quite well and are constantly finding things that we can attribute to their habit of covering over rather than removing and replacing things ;-) We also suspect that whoever built the house back in the 1800s must have arrived in the fall and had to quick throw something together before the snow flew, and then everyone after just kept adding on to meet their own needs! So much history.
May 28, 2023·edited May 28, 2023Liked by Anne Helen Petersen
Needed this post AHP! I've been doing a lot of work in therapy around the concept of optimization, or rather resisting the need to be optimizing every aspect of my life, all the time; and feel so seen coming across posts like this or a recent interview with Jenny Odell in which she argues that our obsession with time-management is stripping ups with humanity. Here's a gift link to the NYT interview if anyone's interested in reading it: https://shorturl.at/eowFJ
The concept of Swedish Death Cleaning only came across my radar within the past week, but there was a quote from the article that I'm already trying to apply to life (oops, optimization again): '"We have this Swedish word, lagom, which means just the right amount, and it’s deeply rooted in our culture,' said [Ella] Engström. 'But Americans, you love your stuff, and you have something for every season! Someone has made you think you need those things.'"
And agree with Engström and Dr. Kathleen Waller, we can live with so much less, and with less, each of those items becomes more precious.
I wish I could attribute the quote, but I forgot. It said "perfection is the inability to sit with discomfort".
A therapist picked up on a word I used a lot. Curate. It's my version of optimization. I thought it was because I valued beauty in general. But then I learned all the ways my brain is constantly trying to fix things. And spend money I may or may not want to spend fixing things I feel like I can gain control over. What helps is to ask what's actually going on that I can't control. I have partner with long Covid and my dog died. I have 110 yr old house that has endless repairs. I'm aging. No curating my way out of those things despite what my brain tells me.
A few years ago, before she moved into assisted living, I was at my Grandma's house a few years after buying my own. She's the wealthiest person I'm related to. And she had cracked plaster. And it took nothing away from how the house made me feel. I just try and go back to that moment when I look at my cracked plaster or windows that need to be restored. Her house held all the magic of my childhood. And then I think of all the ways mine is magical too.
"Perfection is the inability to sit with discomfort.” That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it?
My heart goes out to you in this season. I’ll be working on sitting with my own discomfort too (I suppose we’re in that practice for the long haul, huh?).
I’ll be thinking about your thoughts here for a long time. Thanks for sharing them.
A few years ago, while working as a nanny, I noticed that one of the parents had ordered several different versions of the same thing. When I asked her about it she said that she wanted to find the “best” one. I was baffled. I’d never considered spending hours researching the “best” anything. Mostly because I’ve never been in the economic position to have the best anything. Two years later I was working again as a nanny, this time with a well paying full-time job (that eventually almost killed me), and I fell into the same trap. It was the first time in my adult life that I was making a middle-class income and I bought so many “best” things.
Two years later I moved across the country for a PhD program. Because I’d recently had back surgery (from an injury sustained at that nanny job) I couldn’t drive, and because of the surgery itself and the financial repercussions (I’d quit nannying to try being a freelancer). I ended up taking two suitcases with me and sending sever boxes. Most of that stuff? I sold what I could and the rest got donated. Thousands of dollars worth of the best stuff.
Now I am again below the poverty line. I think about that stuff sometimes. The Staub cocotte, the fancy coffee maker, my fancy spices and “best” mattress and pillows and teas and, of course, so many books. Whenever I think I need something I think about that stuff. I think about the money I spent on it and what else I could have done with that money. Honestly, it’s a hard thing to think about. But it’s important for me because when I think about it I am reminded that I am just fine without it. My kitchen stuff is basically all secondhand; my coffeemaker is cheap; and the nicest thing I have is my mattress. I own very little stuff and I am just fine. I still have a junk drawer.
Being poor forces me to consider every purchase. I am privileged enough to know that my poverty is (after much much work) temporary, but I never want to stop considering the impact of my purchases- on the environment but also on me. What does it mean to think that owning the best thing says anything about me at all? Growing up poor made me think that having fancy things said something about me, and I used to long for them. I wanted nice clothes and items that screamed “class.” Now I know in my bones that my shitty old car and cheap clothes are just “car” and “clothes,” and anyone adding or subtracting my or someone else’s humanity from those items has a lot of work to do, as I have had a lot of work to do.
I know this okayness with what many would consider mediocre things isn’t a permanent state for me, bc I live in consumer culture and it’s insidious. Lately I’ve been remembering a moment in 1999, when I was 19 and saw a middle-aged woman driving a dirty old car, singing joyfully to a song she was listening to. I had the thought then: “why is she so happy when she clearly doesn’t have a lot of money.” Now I’m that femme presenting person with a shitty car singing (not always joyfully) along with songs. Sometimes I feel judged negatively and I always remember that woman and how naive and superficial I was for thinking that, but also how I feared being poor my whole life.
I guess what I’m saying is that Wirecutter can shove their burr grinder because my Kirkland pre-ground coffee does the job, and I know what good coffee tastes like. I should have paid off some of my student loans with the money I spent on really “good” coffee...
I totally relate to having to recognizer my beliefs about what stuff says about me due to growing up poor. I felt so much jealousy and lust at what other families afforded with ease (or seemed to!) The second I got a more than minimum wage job, I started buying so many clothes I could never afford. And it’s nice to clothe my fat body as an adult in a way my chubby child self never had, but then that stuff wears out or doesn’t fit and I wish I had all that money back now as I struggle in my late 30s.
Someone mentioned that they see parallels to diet culture in optimization culture, and for me, the parallel is that feeling scarcity around anything, whether food or “fancy” home goods, leads to a complete out of control feeling! With dieting it was possible for me to start giving myself permission to eat anything, and thankfully, for me, this quickly made all manner of food, “junk” or not, feel neutral. But it is not this simple with STUFF. I can’t have unlimited permission to buy since I am still relatively poor. It’s been a challenge to calm that scarcity mindset, but slowly I make progress.
After working from home and a year on maternity leave, I returned to the outside world feeling like all my clothes were out of style. I started following capsule wardrobe influencers on IG and Like to know and I became obsessed with optimizing my wardrobe. But after a while, all the influencers start to look the same. They buy the same stuff, their style their hair in the same way, their houses all look the same. It’s so boring! A capsule wardrobe is a scam! It’s not simple, you have to buy new stuff every season…it’s insane watching how many outfits these influencers have. It’s the opposite of minimalism.
The thing about the influencer lens on this in particular, is that at some point I noticed they are magazine replacements. They "publish" (aka "post") for different holiday pegs, different seasonal decor changes, etc. Except their lives are the studios, and it's just their home instead of like, a Vogue or Elle fashion shoot in a studio, or Architectural Digest visiting different homes. They are changing their wardrobes at an editorial pace, not a human one. There used to be teams of people and departments and studios for this kind of content; now it's on the back of 1 (or a few) woman. And it's such a distortion for the consumer, because the narrative is that this how an individual lives, not an editorial vision for a publication that needs new issues to hit the newstands.
This is SO insightful and a brilliant way to put it, thank you. I also relate to the comment you're replying to. I actually deleted Instagram earlier this year. Apparently, at one point an errant click in a moment of clickbait weakness started a steady stream of "millennial makeover" "wear this, not that" "makeup/hair/skincare tips for when you're OLD because you're AGING BADLY" suggested reels showing up in my feed. And it's interesting that you related this to magazines because I started having the exact same feeling that I had reading Seventeen or YM in the late 90s: that I'm not good enough, that there's more I should be buying/doing, learning about problems I didn't know existed via an ad for a product meant to solve them, etc. I don't need that feeling any more. So I'm gone. That feeling has destroyed the value prop for me. I could scroll on by, sure, but they're designed to catch the eye and even getting that stuff in my headspace is not something I need. I guess I could try to retrain the algorithm. So much effort. Anyway ... just more of the morphing of instagram into straight entertainment/influencing, a la tiktok, instead of "social media," which means I need to adjust my thinking: I'm making choices about regular old media consumption and not just about "staying connected," and frame the tradeoffs accordingly. (Because there is something I've lost from deleting all my apps; I'm not even sure I'll stick with the decision).
Oh my god — me too! I give myself grace about it since we all deserve some mindless whatever. Even so, I get myself on these ridiculous quests of researching whatever and realize I spent hours a day for weeks looking up whatever-it-is. Currently doing this with rain jackets.
Though again with the grace: I recently sized out of even “plus size” rain jackets, so not only can I not go into a store to find one, I can not even order one online and be reasonably sure it will fit. Hence needing to hunt down a unicorn: one that fits well, isn’t several hundred dollars, and maybe even is a style I like!
It first occurred to me when I was like *Why am I being sold back to school in...June on the scroll?? School just got out!* and then I was like, *oh, that's the magazine editorial calendar. But it's not supposed to hit newsstands until the last 2 weeks of August & the internet is immediate.*
The other big piece I've noticed is how boring and same-y and boring it all is. And that's what happens when the algorithm becomes every single EIC.
I think this is spot on. When I feel compelled to scroll Instagram, I even ask myself, would I be willing to spend this time/attention on a lifestyle magazine? If so, go for it. If not, choose a different activity. But as you note, the infrastructure is totally different and in many ways less just for workers (so-called influencers) and messed up for everyone else who feels pressure to achieve these goals as individuals.
CAPSULE WARDROBE ARE A SCAM!! This is my favorite comment so far, lol. I like wearing different clothes sometimes!! I have a dress that I wear maybe twice a year and you know what? I think that's OK!!!
Agreed. My friends just built a gorgeous new home and we toured it. It looks straight out of an Instagram influencer account, and because of that it was so boring!! To top it off, our other friends are building a house three doors down. We toured that house (which is mostly finished) at the same time. They didn’t even use the same builder or designer but…the houses are nearly identical. So boring!!
I think about this line from the old Mothers Under the Influence blog DAILY:
"An executive at an influencer-management company told me that influencers are encouraged to decorate and dress in neutrals because it allows sponsored products to pop visually in contrast. This trend is now… everyone’s house. .... My motivation here is to “raise awareness” that a lot of our household trends — trends that we allow into the intimate spaces of our family life, where we are meant to feel the safest and most ourselves — are actually linked to imperatives to convert sales on social platforms. This feels significant to me!"
Yes!! This is like the fact that came out a few years ago that “open concept” floor plans were created by HGTV because “men like to watch walls being knocked down.” Blew my mind!
I love tacky things. I love things that look like other things. I spent an hour giggling at a bathroom rug shaped like a peach that says "peachy clean"! This makes me feel sooo much better about my taste in decor - it's not neutral or fashionable or what you'd see in an influencer's apartment but at least it's not turing my apartment into a product photo background!
Very agreed! I’m leaning a little more into kitsch as I get older. I want color and “signs of life” as someone recently said, I think in the Friday thread. I want to eat breakfast off my plates with fat kitty cat drawings. I want to get cozy with my dinosaur blanket. I want my trinket hedgehogs and my elephant planter and my goofy fridge magnets. These are what make my home feel like my home, and not a generic hotel room.
Took the words out of my mouth. I did not know the thing about neutral walls. Also the HGTV open concept reason.
I like places that reflect a personality, a history, a life. Books not organized according to the color of a spine. Goofy or interesting travel memorabilia...
I have to laugh because we just moved to a bigger house that has been partly remodeled along these lines, and somehow all the furniture that ended up in the living room is now ... entirely grey ... with grey walls, and a greige carpet. (All the aformentioned furntiure was scattered about in different rooms in the last place, so less ... monochromatic!) IT'S SO AWFUL! We'll get our stuff out and up on the walls eventually which will make it better, but now when we're looking at new purchases my partner goes "MAKE SURE IT'S NOT TOO TASTEFUL!!!" and it is just so funny because I know exactly what he means.
I have to add that it's ironic because grey is legitimately my favorite color - I genuinely love it - so totally understand that it can be pleasing to folks. But it also now has the potential to channel house flipper vibes that are so offputting to me.
+1 to the scam. It also carved out any whimsy to one’s outfit if your wardrobe is perfectly curated to go with everything. I live in a 4 season climate in DC. I want to wear proper wool slacks like my great aunt did and because it’s 20 degrees outside. I also need clothes for Humidity Girl Summer (aka dressing like a camp counselor).
This is one of my favorite AHP columns of all time, and that's saying something. I'd love to know whether people outside the U.S. are as focused on optimization, or if this is specific to America? David Brooks said in "On Paradise Road" that the fundamental trait of Americans is that we're aspirational. Regardless of our race, ethnicity, political beliefs, length of tenure in this country, etc., we all share a belief that something better is possible with our coffeemakers, yes, but also our homes, our jobs, our marriages, our kids, and everything else. Brooks calls this "the Paradise Spell" - the belief that a glorious destiny awaits us if we can just work hard enough or figure out the right path. He says this notion is built into the very foundation of America. The white Europeans who first settled here did so b/c they believed things would be better here. This same belief drove white westward expansion and continues to drive Americans to move more often than people in just about any other country.
I've noticed when I've worked with Europeans that many of them will make statements along the lines of, "We've always done things this way. Why would we change?" Now I work for a Chinese company, and although they are very fast to cycle through product changes, they do not understand Americans' optimization mindset. We American employees are constantly pushing back against policies and procedures that seem inefficient or pointless, and we usually get an answer akin to, "B/c I said so." One Chinese coworker said, "Americans think everything should make them happy. But we do not have time to change everything." I know he meant "happy" in the sense of "everything should work like Americans think it should" ... but I also think there's a deeper, more existential truth in what he said. After all, the end goal of all this optimization is happiness, right?
I’m Canadian, and I do see a difference when I travel. I’m currently in San Diego waiting to fly home and my husband and I noticed that Americans monetize everything! Every attraction we went to was well staffed, efficient, but if something could be charged, there was a cost. I noticed the opposite when travelling through Europe; I couldn’t get over that we could just walk into churches and castles for free! Europeans didn’t provide the same level of guest services that Americans provide, but I think that comes down to them not caring about optimizing the tourist experience as much.
Such an interesting thought! I do think Americans love to find solutions to every tiny problem, whereas us Europeans are just like: "I hadn't thought this could be done differently!" Which can of course be bad because we have archaic systems sometimes (I'm thinking of silly things, like sheets). This makes shopping in the US super fun (tons of options, colors, price points) but in the end... I don't miss it one bit. It's just a nice distraction when there's nothing else to do. You feel antsy, you go to the mall (now online shopping) and the void has not been filled
It's funny, I actually just ~optimized~ my coffee setup, haha. Previously I had the coffee, tea, hot cocoa mix, honey and splenda, etc. in a cabinet at the end of the kitchen, coffee grinder at the other far end, all my coffee-making implements scattered throughout the kitchen with no real home. I moved everything onto the same shelf next to where the coffee grinder is plugged in, and now my pourover, moka pot, and french press all live right next to the beans, the grinder, and the splenda. It's honestly made a really big difference for me! Everything is right where it needs to be, I'm not going back and forth multiple times... just streamlined it all. It is making me very content.
But! I really appreciate this post generally, because there is such a tendency to want to optimize, and while there are some things (like the coffee setup, and like getting new chairs that are actually comfortable to sit on, not making do with the old ones just because they were free even though they sucked) that are worth improving, the ceaseless drive to OPTIMIZE just fuels dissatisfaction. It's like an internalized planned obsolescence – we get tired of something, or the novelty wears off, or we just feel like It Could Be Better, Though... and then some corporate entity gets yet more our dollars.
Once again AHP turns a specific feeling I have regularly into the exact words necessary to describe it!
My in-laws lived for 40 years in Minnetonka, MN in a house they didn’t build, but bought shortly after it was built (in 1978). It was still new and fashionable when they bought it. My MIL is what you would call “cheap” but, as the years go on, I now recognize that she merely rejects consumerism as a core value. I remember the first time I stepped inside their home in 2004 - a full 26 years after the home was built. It was beautiful! It was so “dated” and “70s” but you hardly noticed! Save for “new” appliances purchased in the mid-90s, the house was original with its faux brick tiled entry way, Kelly green plush carpet in the upstairs hall and formal front room, the dark oak floors and kitchen cabinets and the old barn board paneling on the living room walls. My in laws never changed the interior, but they were immaculate homeowners, and they house was so nice! I think about that a lot when I consider the exhaustion I feel about interior design trends. Why should I spend $200k on a new kitchen just to have it declared “dated” in 10 years and have to do it all over again? It is madness!
And now it's dated in 5. I have the gray floors that are now reviled as we needed to replace the flooring in the home we bought (stained carpet!). I still like them but it's already over.
I feel like covid made this so much worse, too, not only because of isolation and boredom, but also because we were essentially abandoned to DYI our own survival. Some people ate horse paste and I renovated a house. I am not sure who is happier.
This resonates with me so much. While working a full time intense job from home, my husbands and I also had to help our kids zoom school. Our youngest could not do it by herself. So we started working at insane hours to keep our jobs. Because the expectations didn’t really change? What was supposed to be a month turned into years.
I kept looking for “hacks” to ... turn myself into a machine? Finally my husband looked at me one night and said “I don’t think you can lifehack your way out of an epidemic.”
“Instead of looking around my living space with gratitude for the soft comfort I’ve built for myself, inflected with my peculiar tastes and preferences, I see lack. And that dissatisfaction becomes a sort of lingering fog, dampening my experience of the world.”
OOF.
This was me this morning. I woke up with an item for my grocery list, and ten minutes later, I found myself scrolling through new reading chairs for my office that I don’t really need but “wouldn’t a reading nook be so cozy? Everyone loves a cozy reading nook.” Even though I’ve already created one in my living room, and then, a new thought popped into my brain: while am at it, shouldn’t I redo my entire wall and fill it with cool travel photos that show on Zooms that I’m smart and sophisticated, instead of the canvas print of a blue door that my mom bought me at Hobby Lobby when I was a new college grad because I was broke and, at the time, I thought an old blue European door would make me look cool and sophisticated? Now, this nice gift from my mom looks like something from a generic Airbnb, not the interesting Zoom fodder so many have perfected over the last few years. (PS: as you could probably tell, I don’t get much of a spark from decorating, lol)
It’s so insidious how this lack creeps into our days. I woke up wanting pickled jalapeños on my grocery list, now I’m worried what colleagues will think of my generic Hobby Lobby Zoom background on the Sunday of a holiday weekend.
Now I am nestled into my (original) reading nook, under a cozy blanket my sister bought for me, candle lit and coffee in hand. Of course, sinking into *this* feeling feels much better.
I've been working on dumping every trace of "there is one right way to live and I must find it" for years, brought on by realizing in therapy that a decade after leaving the Catholic Church I was subconsciously looking for a replacement rulebook to tell me how to live.
There has never been one right way for humans to live. We have been on this planet for so long and have lived in so many different ways and the deceit of the current paradigm is that humans are all supposed to live the same way but it is not true.
It's easier to ditch material optimization and renovation culture when you grew up in a big family with no money, but harder to resist parenting and other abstract life optimization when that family was Catholic.
Colby, I'm struck by your comment that optimization for you became a replacement rulebook after you left Catholicism. I've long thought there was a connection between the declining role of religion in people's lives and the rise of workaholism and optimization culture. This is not to say the answer is a return to all the rules that bad churches impose on people - but I do think more people should follow your lead in pondering: "What need is this meeting in me?"
I think organized religion and in particular Christianity has, for many many White people, replaced (and precipitated the loss of in the first place) the deep cultural knowledge of how to live that we gave up in exchange for Whiteness
Your “looking for bc a replacement rule book” really resonated with me. I grew up Catholic, as well, and am trying to recover from perfectionism and people pleasing. And get frustrated with my lack of “progress.” Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I used to think I was really organized. But recently I’ve realized that I put a lot of effort into learning about organizing as a special interest to stay ahead of my ADHD and that this was my response as an autistic person to fixate on a topic to avoid the trauma of falling at another social expectation. I have never been able to stick with one organizational method for very long because my ADHD get bored so I always figured that it just wasn’t “the best way.” Instead, what I’m learning is that instead of either considering myself a failure or trying to focus on optimization, it fine to recognize that I need variety and just keep switching it up every 3 months. The method doesn’t have to be “perfect” just new and good enough.
Yes, to all of this! Fellow autistic person with ADHD here and it took a lot of therapy for me to realize that switching up my organizational systems a few times a year was not a personal failing, it was a smart system that works for me.
Reading some of these comments made me feel guilty about my research rabbit holes on certain purchases, but upon reflection, it’s not that I am doing it because of rampant consumerism — I really enjoy learning all I can about something and understanding what makes one thing better than the other. Researching special interests is an utter pleasure for me.
The remodelling that really gets to me is kitchens. I see people replacing white kitchens with slightly different white kitchens at such crazy expense. It seems that people aren't replacing kitchens now because they look specifically dated, it's because they don't look new (a subtle distinction, I think). It's totally impossible for your kitchen to look always on trend and seems to me totally bonkers that people are spending 40k+ to replace kitchens at shockingly swift intervals just to remain current...and for what?
I am moving to a new (to us, it was built in 1965) house in 3 weeks. The kitchen is new-ish and great space "but" it has wooden flat panel cupboards and I'm surprised how many people have suggested I can paint them white, etc. I like the response of "That's not important to me".
Isn't it great? I read this recently but I forget where. It's seems like such a strong stance to me. So much better than "oh, I like it this way" or "I don't care". I feel like it signifies I've already thought of their critique and whether I agree or disagree I've decided it's not important.
I am laughing a little at the suggestion that you paint the kitchen cupboards - when i bought my 1960 house, the original wood kitchen had been painted white, and i spent all of 2021 stripping the white paint off the cupboard doors. (I needed a low-effort project with lots of visible progress that year, as I was doing a lot of high level work and my brain was exhausted.).
My husband's cousin spent a small fortune on a kitchen renovation a couple of years ago, after deeming her 20-year-old kitchen "dated." To my eye, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it -- the cupboards were beautiful, solid cherrywood. She now has a gleaming all-white kitchen with a huge long island/eating counter that looks like every other kitchen in the magazines/HGTV right now. I guess it's more "in style," but it has no warmth to it.
We lived in the same house for 26 years -- it was built in 1983, and we never did anything in the kitchen aside from removing wallpaper/painting, and replacing a few appliances. The inside cupboard shelving was cheap covered particleboard that sagged, but the cupboard doors themselves, while rather 80s-looking in design, were solid oak. When we started thinking of selling the house, I knew we'd have to do something with the kitchen, but the thought of sinking tens of thousands of dollars into a renovation that we probably weren't going to enjoy very long (while enduring the MESS and inconvenience while the work was done!) was not appealing. We wound up doing a "facelift" -- we restained the cupboards (some people suggested we paint them, but I didn't like the idea of covering up good solid wood), changed the handles and added a tile backsplash, as well as a new range hood and lighting fixtures. It wouldn't have been featured in any magazine layout, but it did brighten things up, which was good enough, in my books...!
I feel like it's just going to constantly oscillate between light and dark kitchens, warm and cool, ornate and sleek. It's also impossible to be off trend because the manufacturers only sell what's trendy. Good luck putting down a floor right now that isn't wide plank and in a few I'm sure it will be a very dated floor width
Sometimes I feel like when I gave up diet culture, I just put all those feelings into my home. This captures why that is so well.
Ooooooof
I find optimization culture fascinating because it does NOT resonate with me very much. I am extremely a "good enough" sort of person (maybe to a fault?) and do not feel that I am skilled at decorating, organizing, etc. I've been trying ever since the pandemic to actually have a cute Zoom background and I still sort of don't! It's like a language I just don't speak. But I live with two people who are more attuned to optimization culture, which makes it very hard to just, like, buy a rug or a coffee maker or whatever. I recently just BOUGHT A CONSUMER GOOD that I had not researched AT ALL, and my husband joked, "How will you know if it was the best one??" and I said, "I don't actually care if it is!"
I’m with you on this. I know people like this—even people close to me—but have never understood it. I’d be really interested in reading a piece that gets into where this split comes in. I personally just like things simple—not optimized or staged for Instagram simple, just as low-maintenance as possible. “Is it easy to clean?” is about as optimal as I can get, and shopping for anything exhausts me. I do like things to be as reusable/recyclable as possible, which is part of why I don’t quite get trying to find the “best” thing. Stuff breaks and wears out all the time. I bought my spouse a coffee maker last year using Wirecutter’s guidance because he’s really into gadgets and optimizing, but I’ve been using the same plastic Melitta cone filter to make my coffee for something like 30 years and it works just fine for me! (Granted, it doesn’t keep coffee hot, but when I use my spouse’s coffee maker, I find I drink more coffee than my body actually wants anyway.)
Years ago I heard someone talk about maximizers and satisfizers: the first are the people who do all the research, who often can’t take a decision until they feel they’ve exhausted all the options; the second are the people who are more in the good enough-camp. My partner is a maximizer, I am a satisfizer: understanding that difference in the way in which we approach situations and make decisions (planning for travel, buying a house) has been really helpful. Booking trips would be considerably more painful if my partner were to do it, we would be living in a less nice house if we’d followed my satisifzer impulses, so often it balances out.
That is true. I think our main issue is that I get frustrated at how long it can take to decide on something, and he gets bummed that I'm not more enthusiastically engaged in, say, bathroom tile choices!
I'm somewhere in between, but get to satisfy my maximizer tendencies at work (I'm a scientist) and maximize my satisfier tendencies at home.
Ironicallly, it's actually a lot easier to select an expensive piece of lab equipment than an appliance, because there aren't as many options.
I saw these terms a few years back and it really put my relationship into context :) I’m the maximizer, she’s the satisfizer but I am trying to pick my spots as far as the maximization goes. Funny that you mention travel planning since I’m now planning a vacation and walking that fine line between making the most of the trip, leaving spaces for exploration, and being flexible to change plans if needed/wanted.
Good luck (and have fun!) with the planning!
This is so affirming and really resonates! Except thankfully for me my partner is even less of an optimizer than I am so we are aligned in our good enough life. I will admit that I do use Wirecutter when there are a lot of options and I feel totally lost as to how to decide. But the running joke in our family is that any time you go out of your way to find the Wirecutter pick it will break and you will end up buying whatever random thing you can find in stock at the store and it will work great (or, you know, well enough).
Ha, are you me? I don't think I've ever really "researched" a Consumer Good -- at most, I compare reviews of the least expensive versions of something I need, or ask a friend more savvy about it (like when I got my first laptop back in 2011) which they think is more likely to annoy me.
It probably helps that I prefer the "worse" versions of some things, too? Like bedsheets -- everyone talks about higher thread count, but I want ones with edges you can fold into sharp-ish corners and trace along your fingers (a weird thing I have constantly done since I was little), which means I want the cheap cotton sheets because the higher the thread count the less you can make them corner-y...
Yes! There are lots of things where I'm like "store brand is fine" or "this cheap version is actually pretty great." (Looking at you, Malt-O-Meal Fruity Dino Bites!)
Teach me your ways ;)
I honestly think working in an under-resourced newsroom for 13 years firmly divorced me from the notion of a "one best way," and helped me cultivate the ability to make a quick decision and simply forward with whatever was possible in that particular moment. However, 0/10 do not recommend that as a life path!
Being cheap and lazy helps, too. Frugality and laziness are my guide stars, the twin pillars through which all my life decisions must pass 🙃 If you can keep "cheap and lazy" in view at all times, you may find that researching the ONE TRUE COFFEE MAKER, and spending money on it, is perhaps too hard and expensive and you would rather spend that time napping, or eating Cheetos, or rewatching "New Girl"
Amen to being cheap and lazy! I am both. Our current coffeemaker is an under-$30 Mr. Coffee bought at Walmart last October when the old one broke. It makes the coffee, which is all I ask of it, and has not overflowed or done anything else untoward.
Folgers in the drip coffee maker is the best! It is my lifeblood.
My parents were telling me about the graduation party they went to yesterday and how there was no simple cake and punch like days of yore. It was all “chocolate covered strawberries” and “bespoke churros” and other more “original” fare. I said “I can’t wait until my kids graduate and we have cake and punch and people think it’s so quirky and original!”
I am co-planning a high school graduation party with a mom I had never met until our kids decided they would team up for a party. Could totally have been an optimization nightmare! Instead it’s been AWESOME! She’s ordering Chipotle, I’m getting drinks. Her kid doesn’t like cake so she’s making candy grab bags with her daughter. Boom! That’s it. I adored her instantly!
Cheap and lazy IS THE WAY
I can relate to this, but from the opposite direction. As a pharmacist, optimization and precision do matter and in most cases there is one right way. In the past, I brought this approach home with me. I definitely worried about a lot of things that weren't worth my time. I've found writing really brain balancing — keeping my brain from getting stuck in a "one best way" mode. And making time for doing something fun also helps me shift my focus to the bigger picture so I can see how "cheap and lazy" are better "guide stars" for many decisions I make — probably most decisions, but I'm not quite there yet.
Being able not to care is a superpower. It's different, of course, if it's something you absolutely need and can't afford an alternative if it fails.
Solidarity on the “non-cute” Zoom background. 😂🙌
It's never gonna be cute and that's OK!!
I am so similar to you in this!
Ten years ago, we bought a modest house built the 60s on 8 fallow acres in a short sale. We did not remodel it. We put a new coat of paint on the inside, called it done, and started planting an orchard and flower field on the outside. We do not have the latest coffee maker. We do not have gray vinyl floors. We do not have a cold plunge.
Instead, we built a thriving ecosystem. We grow 5 tons of food a year. I wake up to birdsong. There are jack rabbits and wild turkeys wandering around my front yard right now. I see dozens of my neighbors here every week. My house is filled with flowers. All that, for less than the cost of the average home remodel :)
Following you now! :) My mom is a farmer and it's not my thing at all but it brings her so much joy and vitality. It also legit keeps her blood pressure steady--when she misses days on the farm, it goes up. I'm so happy she has that outlet. And I'm so happy people like you exist! (Because despite descending from generations of farmers I have a black thumb. LOL)
Aw, that's wonderful. Not everyone should be a farmer for sure! We need teachers and doctors and lovers and dreamers and all of the breadth of humanity.
FWIW, my first "garden" was on a fire escape in Manhattan over a sex shop. I killed 90% of what I planted. Now, some 35 years later, I only kill around 10% :)
Ah, so there's hope for me yet! :) Congrats again on creating something so amazing.
I would love to read more about how you did this!
I have written about it a little bit on our farm website:
https://birdsongorchards.com/pages/about-our-farm
Wow, this sounds like a dream! There’s something about nature, and also historic structures like farmhouses, that helps us resist the optimization. Nature is perfectly ok with “good enough”, and that old farmhouse with the crooked doorways is ok with good enough too.
Someone else might have talked about this somewhere else in the thread, but I wonder if part of the optimization thing is that we feel scarce on resources. I know that for me, I aggressively research most purchases over $50 because I don’t want to waste my limited money (even though you could argue that all the time researching is its own form of waste). But nature is all about abundance and adaptation. When your farmhouse was built, it might not have been an abundant time for the builder, or maybe it was, but maybe there wasn’t a sense of scarcity in the way many of us feel now, about physical and abstract resources.
Oh, I just love this!
We bought our 120+ yo farmhouse in 2004 at an auction “as-is” the day after first learning it existed. We moved in 30 days later and now, 19 years (and 3 kids and 4 dogs) later have made almost no aesthetic improvements. We have fixed things that needed fixing (and replaced the septic system, added an outdoor wood burner and are replacing the roof this summer) and added a window to a windowless wall and doors to several doorless rooms, but we still have 6 kinds of fake wood paneling and walls with 8 layers of wallpaper, and 5 kinds of flooring on the first floor and one teeny tiny bathroom for 5 of us. No one who has ever visited our home understands our complete lack of desire to update things or make it more aesthetically pleasing (to them). But we feel that our money is better spent on things we need and experiences and paying down debt and just living. Our house is our home and it’s quirky and unique and we have our gorgeous land and solitude and so many people don’t understand why that’s enough for us. You perfectly described why most home-based social media makes me feel horrible and why I avoid reading almost anything about home renovations - it makes me feel like I’m not enough because I’m okay leaving things the way they are. Thank you for this piece.
Writing this out and re-reading it makes me realize how much shame can be induced in today's upper middle class society around aesthetics and social media worthy living spaces. It saddens me to think that so many of us are made to feel this way when simply having a roof over our heads is so much more than so so so many fellow Americans have. When I see old homes being demolished so owners can build brand new ones, I mourn the buildings that weren't deemed worthy of modern society when they would still be perfectly fine for so many. I obviously have a LOT of thoughts and a lot to unpack surrounding this topic........
I wish more people were like you. Useless renovations are terrible for the environment and frankly, I think that aesthetically, they suck. Give me the quirky, colourful, unrenovated home anytime!
I've never met someone who regretted NOT dumping a bunch of money into their home. Besides the money, you can't get the time back either. (Full disclosure: I say this as someone who once made that mistake.) Your priorities make total sense!
Thank you for this. I definitely also have shame about all the ways our house is not upgraded and this helps!
Honestly it was such a revelation to me too that shame is the emotion I was feeling! I decided to take the summer off of Instagram and I suspect it will make a big difference
Your home sounds awesome, and super full of character.
We like to ponder a lot of the designs and figure out who made some of the choices! We know the last owners quite well and are constantly finding things that we can attribute to their habit of covering over rather than removing and replacing things ;-) We also suspect that whoever built the house back in the 1800s must have arrived in the fall and had to quick throw something together before the snow flew, and then everyone after just kept adding on to meet their own needs! So much history.
Needed this post AHP! I've been doing a lot of work in therapy around the concept of optimization, or rather resisting the need to be optimizing every aspect of my life, all the time; and feel so seen coming across posts like this or a recent interview with Jenny Odell in which she argues that our obsession with time-management is stripping ups with humanity. Here's a gift link to the NYT interview if anyone's interested in reading it: https://shorturl.at/eowFJ
The concept of Swedish Death Cleaning only came across my radar within the past week, but there was a quote from the article that I'm already trying to apply to life (oops, optimization again): '"We have this Swedish word, lagom, which means just the right amount, and it’s deeply rooted in our culture,' said [Ella] Engström. 'But Americans, you love your stuff, and you have something for every season! Someone has made you think you need those things.'"
And agree with Engström and Dr. Kathleen Waller, we can live with so much less, and with less, each of those items becomes more precious.
I wish I could attribute the quote, but I forgot. It said "perfection is the inability to sit with discomfort".
A therapist picked up on a word I used a lot. Curate. It's my version of optimization. I thought it was because I valued beauty in general. But then I learned all the ways my brain is constantly trying to fix things. And spend money I may or may not want to spend fixing things I feel like I can gain control over. What helps is to ask what's actually going on that I can't control. I have partner with long Covid and my dog died. I have 110 yr old house that has endless repairs. I'm aging. No curating my way out of those things despite what my brain tells me.
A few years ago, before she moved into assisted living, I was at my Grandma's house a few years after buying my own. She's the wealthiest person I'm related to. And she had cracked plaster. And it took nothing away from how the house made me feel. I just try and go back to that moment when I look at my cracked plaster or windows that need to be restored. Her house held all the magic of my childhood. And then I think of all the ways mine is magical too.
"Perfection is the inability to sit with discomfort.” That’s it in a nutshell, isn’t it?
My heart goes out to you in this season. I’ll be working on sitting with my own discomfort too (I suppose we’re in that practice for the long haul, huh?).
I’ll be thinking about your thoughts here for a long time. Thanks for sharing them.
A few years ago, while working as a nanny, I noticed that one of the parents had ordered several different versions of the same thing. When I asked her about it she said that she wanted to find the “best” one. I was baffled. I’d never considered spending hours researching the “best” anything. Mostly because I’ve never been in the economic position to have the best anything. Two years later I was working again as a nanny, this time with a well paying full-time job (that eventually almost killed me), and I fell into the same trap. It was the first time in my adult life that I was making a middle-class income and I bought so many “best” things.
Two years later I moved across the country for a PhD program. Because I’d recently had back surgery (from an injury sustained at that nanny job) I couldn’t drive, and because of the surgery itself and the financial repercussions (I’d quit nannying to try being a freelancer). I ended up taking two suitcases with me and sending sever boxes. Most of that stuff? I sold what I could and the rest got donated. Thousands of dollars worth of the best stuff.
Now I am again below the poverty line. I think about that stuff sometimes. The Staub cocotte, the fancy coffee maker, my fancy spices and “best” mattress and pillows and teas and, of course, so many books. Whenever I think I need something I think about that stuff. I think about the money I spent on it and what else I could have done with that money. Honestly, it’s a hard thing to think about. But it’s important for me because when I think about it I am reminded that I am just fine without it. My kitchen stuff is basically all secondhand; my coffeemaker is cheap; and the nicest thing I have is my mattress. I own very little stuff and I am just fine. I still have a junk drawer.
Being poor forces me to consider every purchase. I am privileged enough to know that my poverty is (after much much work) temporary, but I never want to stop considering the impact of my purchases- on the environment but also on me. What does it mean to think that owning the best thing says anything about me at all? Growing up poor made me think that having fancy things said something about me, and I used to long for them. I wanted nice clothes and items that screamed “class.” Now I know in my bones that my shitty old car and cheap clothes are just “car” and “clothes,” and anyone adding or subtracting my or someone else’s humanity from those items has a lot of work to do, as I have had a lot of work to do.
I know this okayness with what many would consider mediocre things isn’t a permanent state for me, bc I live in consumer culture and it’s insidious. Lately I’ve been remembering a moment in 1999, when I was 19 and saw a middle-aged woman driving a dirty old car, singing joyfully to a song she was listening to. I had the thought then: “why is she so happy when she clearly doesn’t have a lot of money.” Now I’m that femme presenting person with a shitty car singing (not always joyfully) along with songs. Sometimes I feel judged negatively and I always remember that woman and how naive and superficial I was for thinking that, but also how I feared being poor my whole life.
I guess what I’m saying is that Wirecutter can shove their burr grinder because my Kirkland pre-ground coffee does the job, and I know what good coffee tastes like. I should have paid off some of my student loans with the money I spent on really “good” coffee...
I totally relate to having to recognizer my beliefs about what stuff says about me due to growing up poor. I felt so much jealousy and lust at what other families afforded with ease (or seemed to!) The second I got a more than minimum wage job, I started buying so many clothes I could never afford. And it’s nice to clothe my fat body as an adult in a way my chubby child self never had, but then that stuff wears out or doesn’t fit and I wish I had all that money back now as I struggle in my late 30s.
Someone mentioned that they see parallels to diet culture in optimization culture, and for me, the parallel is that feeling scarcity around anything, whether food or “fancy” home goods, leads to a complete out of control feeling! With dieting it was possible for me to start giving myself permission to eat anything, and thankfully, for me, this quickly made all manner of food, “junk” or not, feel neutral. But it is not this simple with STUFF. I can’t have unlimited permission to buy since I am still relatively poor. It’s been a challenge to calm that scarcity mindset, but slowly I make progress.
I 100% relate to ALL of this.
I’m the same age as you and am also in the shitty(ish) car and damn I hope people drive by wondering why I look so happy ❤️
Love this so much!
PS: buying books is good! buy books! :)
Spot on! Love this on all the levels.
After working from home and a year on maternity leave, I returned to the outside world feeling like all my clothes were out of style. I started following capsule wardrobe influencers on IG and Like to know and I became obsessed with optimizing my wardrobe. But after a while, all the influencers start to look the same. They buy the same stuff, their style their hair in the same way, their houses all look the same. It’s so boring! A capsule wardrobe is a scam! It’s not simple, you have to buy new stuff every season…it’s insane watching how many outfits these influencers have. It’s the opposite of minimalism.
The thing about the influencer lens on this in particular, is that at some point I noticed they are magazine replacements. They "publish" (aka "post") for different holiday pegs, different seasonal decor changes, etc. Except their lives are the studios, and it's just their home instead of like, a Vogue or Elle fashion shoot in a studio, or Architectural Digest visiting different homes. They are changing their wardrobes at an editorial pace, not a human one. There used to be teams of people and departments and studios for this kind of content; now it's on the back of 1 (or a few) woman. And it's such a distortion for the consumer, because the narrative is that this how an individual lives, not an editorial vision for a publication that needs new issues to hit the newstands.
This is SO insightful and a brilliant way to put it, thank you. I also relate to the comment you're replying to. I actually deleted Instagram earlier this year. Apparently, at one point an errant click in a moment of clickbait weakness started a steady stream of "millennial makeover" "wear this, not that" "makeup/hair/skincare tips for when you're OLD because you're AGING BADLY" suggested reels showing up in my feed. And it's interesting that you related this to magazines because I started having the exact same feeling that I had reading Seventeen or YM in the late 90s: that I'm not good enough, that there's more I should be buying/doing, learning about problems I didn't know existed via an ad for a product meant to solve them, etc. I don't need that feeling any more. So I'm gone. That feeling has destroyed the value prop for me. I could scroll on by, sure, but they're designed to catch the eye and even getting that stuff in my headspace is not something I need. I guess I could try to retrain the algorithm. So much effort. Anyway ... just more of the morphing of instagram into straight entertainment/influencing, a la tiktok, instead of "social media," which means I need to adjust my thinking: I'm making choices about regular old media consumption and not just about "staying connected," and frame the tradeoffs accordingly. (Because there is something I've lost from deleting all my apps; I'm not even sure I'll stick with the decision).
On reflection, what I’ve replaced social media with on my phone is … “researching” purchases 💀 It’s still scrolling!!
Oh my god — me too! I give myself grace about it since we all deserve some mindless whatever. Even so, I get myself on these ridiculous quests of researching whatever and realize I spent hours a day for weeks looking up whatever-it-is. Currently doing this with rain jackets.
Though again with the grace: I recently sized out of even “plus size” rain jackets, so not only can I not go into a store to find one, I can not even order one online and be reasonably sure it will fit. Hence needing to hunt down a unicorn: one that fits well, isn’t several hundred dollars, and maybe even is a style I like!
It first occurred to me when I was like *Why am I being sold back to school in...June on the scroll?? School just got out!* and then I was like, *oh, that's the magazine editorial calendar. But it's not supposed to hit newsstands until the last 2 weeks of August & the internet is immediate.*
The other big piece I've noticed is how boring and same-y and boring it all is. And that's what happens when the algorithm becomes every single EIC.
I think this is spot on. When I feel compelled to scroll Instagram, I even ask myself, would I be willing to spend this time/attention on a lifestyle magazine? If so, go for it. If not, choose a different activity. But as you note, the infrastructure is totally different and in many ways less just for workers (so-called influencers) and messed up for everyone else who feels pressure to achieve these goals as individuals.
So they're like Martha Stewart without the stock fraud conviction, at least so far.
My favorite influencer movie is a Christmas flick, Christmas in Connecticut. It's completely charming.
CAPSULE WARDROBE ARE A SCAM!! This is my favorite comment so far, lol. I like wearing different clothes sometimes!! I have a dress that I wear maybe twice a year and you know what? I think that's OK!!!
Lol! I think that’s ok too!
Agreed. My friends just built a gorgeous new home and we toured it. It looks straight out of an Instagram influencer account, and because of that it was so boring!! To top it off, our other friends are building a house three doors down. We toured that house (which is mostly finished) at the same time. They didn’t even use the same builder or designer but…the houses are nearly identical. So boring!!
I think about this line from the old Mothers Under the Influence blog DAILY:
"An executive at an influencer-management company told me that influencers are encouraged to decorate and dress in neutrals because it allows sponsored products to pop visually in contrast. This trend is now… everyone’s house. .... My motivation here is to “raise awareness” that a lot of our household trends — trends that we allow into the intimate spaces of our family life, where we are meant to feel the safest and most ourselves — are actually linked to imperatives to convert sales on social platforms. This feels significant to me!"
https://mothersundertheinfluence.substack.com/p/dirtying-the-feed
Yes!! This is like the fact that came out a few years ago that “open concept” floor plans were created by HGTV because “men like to watch walls being knocked down.” Blew my mind!
I love tacky things. I love things that look like other things. I spent an hour giggling at a bathroom rug shaped like a peach that says "peachy clean"! This makes me feel sooo much better about my taste in decor - it's not neutral or fashionable or what you'd see in an influencer's apartment but at least it's not turing my apartment into a product photo background!
Very agreed! I’m leaning a little more into kitsch as I get older. I want color and “signs of life” as someone recently said, I think in the Friday thread. I want to eat breakfast off my plates with fat kitty cat drawings. I want to get cozy with my dinosaur blanket. I want my trinket hedgehogs and my elephant planter and my goofy fridge magnets. These are what make my home feel like my home, and not a generic hotel room.
Oh my. Where's the joy in that?
Took the words out of my mouth. I did not know the thing about neutral walls. Also the HGTV open concept reason.
I like places that reflect a personality, a history, a life. Books not organized according to the color of a spine. Goofy or interesting travel memorabilia...
I have to laugh because we just moved to a bigger house that has been partly remodeled along these lines, and somehow all the furniture that ended up in the living room is now ... entirely grey ... with grey walls, and a greige carpet. (All the aformentioned furntiure was scattered about in different rooms in the last place, so less ... monochromatic!) IT'S SO AWFUL! We'll get our stuff out and up on the walls eventually which will make it better, but now when we're looking at new purchases my partner goes "MAKE SURE IT'S NOT TOO TASTEFUL!!!" and it is just so funny because I know exactly what he means.
I have to add that it's ironic because grey is legitimately my favorite color - I genuinely love it - so totally understand that it can be pleasing to folks. But it also now has the potential to channel house flipper vibes that are so offputting to me.
+1 to the scam. It also carved out any whimsy to one’s outfit if your wardrobe is perfectly curated to go with everything. I live in a 4 season climate in DC. I want to wear proper wool slacks like my great aunt did and because it’s 20 degrees outside. I also need clothes for Humidity Girl Summer (aka dressing like a camp counselor).
This is one of my favorite AHP columns of all time, and that's saying something. I'd love to know whether people outside the U.S. are as focused on optimization, or if this is specific to America? David Brooks said in "On Paradise Road" that the fundamental trait of Americans is that we're aspirational. Regardless of our race, ethnicity, political beliefs, length of tenure in this country, etc., we all share a belief that something better is possible with our coffeemakers, yes, but also our homes, our jobs, our marriages, our kids, and everything else. Brooks calls this "the Paradise Spell" - the belief that a glorious destiny awaits us if we can just work hard enough or figure out the right path. He says this notion is built into the very foundation of America. The white Europeans who first settled here did so b/c they believed things would be better here. This same belief drove white westward expansion and continues to drive Americans to move more often than people in just about any other country.
I've noticed when I've worked with Europeans that many of them will make statements along the lines of, "We've always done things this way. Why would we change?" Now I work for a Chinese company, and although they are very fast to cycle through product changes, they do not understand Americans' optimization mindset. We American employees are constantly pushing back against policies and procedures that seem inefficient or pointless, and we usually get an answer akin to, "B/c I said so." One Chinese coworker said, "Americans think everything should make them happy. But we do not have time to change everything." I know he meant "happy" in the sense of "everything should work like Americans think it should" ... but I also think there's a deeper, more existential truth in what he said. After all, the end goal of all this optimization is happiness, right?
I’m Canadian, and I do see a difference when I travel. I’m currently in San Diego waiting to fly home and my husband and I noticed that Americans monetize everything! Every attraction we went to was well staffed, efficient, but if something could be charged, there was a cost. I noticed the opposite when travelling through Europe; I couldn’t get over that we could just walk into churches and castles for free! Europeans didn’t provide the same level of guest services that Americans provide, but I think that comes down to them not caring about optimizing the tourist experience as much.
Such an interesting thought! I do think Americans love to find solutions to every tiny problem, whereas us Europeans are just like: "I hadn't thought this could be done differently!" Which can of course be bad because we have archaic systems sometimes (I'm thinking of silly things, like sheets). This makes shopping in the US super fun (tons of options, colors, price points) but in the end... I don't miss it one bit. It's just a nice distraction when there's nothing else to do. You feel antsy, you go to the mall (now online shopping) and the void has not been filled
It's funny, I actually just ~optimized~ my coffee setup, haha. Previously I had the coffee, tea, hot cocoa mix, honey and splenda, etc. in a cabinet at the end of the kitchen, coffee grinder at the other far end, all my coffee-making implements scattered throughout the kitchen with no real home. I moved everything onto the same shelf next to where the coffee grinder is plugged in, and now my pourover, moka pot, and french press all live right next to the beans, the grinder, and the splenda. It's honestly made a really big difference for me! Everything is right where it needs to be, I'm not going back and forth multiple times... just streamlined it all. It is making me very content.
But! I really appreciate this post generally, because there is such a tendency to want to optimize, and while there are some things (like the coffee setup, and like getting new chairs that are actually comfortable to sit on, not making do with the old ones just because they were free even though they sucked) that are worth improving, the ceaseless drive to OPTIMIZE just fuels dissatisfaction. It's like an internalized planned obsolescence – we get tired of something, or the novelty wears off, or we just feel like It Could Be Better, Though... and then some corporate entity gets yet more our dollars.
Once again AHP turns a specific feeling I have regularly into the exact words necessary to describe it!
My in-laws lived for 40 years in Minnetonka, MN in a house they didn’t build, but bought shortly after it was built (in 1978). It was still new and fashionable when they bought it. My MIL is what you would call “cheap” but, as the years go on, I now recognize that she merely rejects consumerism as a core value. I remember the first time I stepped inside their home in 2004 - a full 26 years after the home was built. It was beautiful! It was so “dated” and “70s” but you hardly noticed! Save for “new” appliances purchased in the mid-90s, the house was original with its faux brick tiled entry way, Kelly green plush carpet in the upstairs hall and formal front room, the dark oak floors and kitchen cabinets and the old barn board paneling on the living room walls. My in laws never changed the interior, but they were immaculate homeowners, and they house was so nice! I think about that a lot when I consider the exhaustion I feel about interior design trends. Why should I spend $200k on a new kitchen just to have it declared “dated” in 10 years and have to do it all over again? It is madness!
Amen to the madness! Also, if this is what is said about me, I will live and die a happy woman: “she merely rejects consumerism as a core value” ❤️
It’s total madness! I can’t get over the waste produced from all these renovations of perfectly good kitchens!
And now it's dated in 5. I have the gray floors that are now reviled as we needed to replace the flooring in the home we bought (stained carpet!). I still like them but it's already over.
I hate it! Embrace your dated floors and move on, right? 😅
I feel like covid made this so much worse, too, not only because of isolation and boredom, but also because we were essentially abandoned to DYI our own survival. Some people ate horse paste and I renovated a house. I am not sure who is happier.
This resonates with me so much. While working a full time intense job from home, my husbands and I also had to help our kids zoom school. Our youngest could not do it by herself. So we started working at insane hours to keep our jobs. Because the expectations didn’t really change? What was supposed to be a month turned into years.
I kept looking for “hacks” to ... turn myself into a machine? Finally my husband looked at me one night and said “I don’t think you can lifehack your way out of an epidemic.”
Haha that is so perfect. DIY survival era, indeed!
DIY!
This bit made me put down my (pour over) coffee:
“Instead of looking around my living space with gratitude for the soft comfort I’ve built for myself, inflected with my peculiar tastes and preferences, I see lack. And that dissatisfaction becomes a sort of lingering fog, dampening my experience of the world.”
OOF.
This was me this morning. I woke up with an item for my grocery list, and ten minutes later, I found myself scrolling through new reading chairs for my office that I don’t really need but “wouldn’t a reading nook be so cozy? Everyone loves a cozy reading nook.” Even though I’ve already created one in my living room, and then, a new thought popped into my brain: while am at it, shouldn’t I redo my entire wall and fill it with cool travel photos that show on Zooms that I’m smart and sophisticated, instead of the canvas print of a blue door that my mom bought me at Hobby Lobby when I was a new college grad because I was broke and, at the time, I thought an old blue European door would make me look cool and sophisticated? Now, this nice gift from my mom looks like something from a generic Airbnb, not the interesting Zoom fodder so many have perfected over the last few years. (PS: as you could probably tell, I don’t get much of a spark from decorating, lol)
It’s so insidious how this lack creeps into our days. I woke up wanting pickled jalapeños on my grocery list, now I’m worried what colleagues will think of my generic Hobby Lobby Zoom background on the Sunday of a holiday weekend.
Now I am nestled into my (original) reading nook, under a cozy blanket my sister bought for me, candle lit and coffee in hand. Of course, sinking into *this* feeling feels much better.
I love images of old European doors and I love blue. I totally understand wanting to look sophisticated. I did too.
Thanks for giving me the kindness of feeling seen today. ❤️
I've been working on dumping every trace of "there is one right way to live and I must find it" for years, brought on by realizing in therapy that a decade after leaving the Catholic Church I was subconsciously looking for a replacement rulebook to tell me how to live.
There has never been one right way for humans to live. We have been on this planet for so long and have lived in so many different ways and the deceit of the current paradigm is that humans are all supposed to live the same way but it is not true.
It's easier to ditch material optimization and renovation culture when you grew up in a big family with no money, but harder to resist parenting and other abstract life optimization when that family was Catholic.
Colby, I'm struck by your comment that optimization for you became a replacement rulebook after you left Catholicism. I've long thought there was a connection between the declining role of religion in people's lives and the rise of workaholism and optimization culture. This is not to say the answer is a return to all the rules that bad churches impose on people - but I do think more people should follow your lead in pondering: "What need is this meeting in me?"
I think organized religion and in particular Christianity has, for many many White people, replaced (and precipitated the loss of in the first place) the deep cultural knowledge of how to live that we gave up in exchange for Whiteness
I am going to be pondering this all day.
Thank you; this just opened a window in my brain.
Your “looking for bc a replacement rule book” really resonated with me. I grew up Catholic, as well, and am trying to recover from perfectionism and people pleasing. And get frustrated with my lack of “progress.” Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
I used to think I was really organized. But recently I’ve realized that I put a lot of effort into learning about organizing as a special interest to stay ahead of my ADHD and that this was my response as an autistic person to fixate on a topic to avoid the trauma of falling at another social expectation. I have never been able to stick with one organizational method for very long because my ADHD get bored so I always figured that it just wasn’t “the best way.” Instead, what I’m learning is that instead of either considering myself a failure or trying to focus on optimization, it fine to recognize that I need variety and just keep switching it up every 3 months. The method doesn’t have to be “perfect” just new and good enough.
Yes, to all of this! Fellow autistic person with ADHD here and it took a lot of therapy for me to realize that switching up my organizational systems a few times a year was not a personal failing, it was a smart system that works for me.
Reading some of these comments made me feel guilty about my research rabbit holes on certain purchases, but upon reflection, it’s not that I am doing it because of rampant consumerism — I really enjoy learning all I can about something and understanding what makes one thing better than the other. Researching special interests is an utter pleasure for me.
The remodelling that really gets to me is kitchens. I see people replacing white kitchens with slightly different white kitchens at such crazy expense. It seems that people aren't replacing kitchens now because they look specifically dated, it's because they don't look new (a subtle distinction, I think). It's totally impossible for your kitchen to look always on trend and seems to me totally bonkers that people are spending 40k+ to replace kitchens at shockingly swift intervals just to remain current...and for what?
I am moving to a new (to us, it was built in 1965) house in 3 weeks. The kitchen is new-ish and great space "but" it has wooden flat panel cupboards and I'm surprised how many people have suggested I can paint them white, etc. I like the response of "That's not important to me".
“That’s not important to me” speaks to my soul ~ I shall be using this!
Isn't it great? I read this recently but I forget where. It's seems like such a strong stance to me. So much better than "oh, I like it this way" or "I don't care". I feel like it signifies I've already thought of their critique and whether I agree or disagree I've decided it's not important.
I am laughing a little at the suggestion that you paint the kitchen cupboards - when i bought my 1960 house, the original wood kitchen had been painted white, and i spent all of 2021 stripping the white paint off the cupboard doors. (I needed a low-effort project with lots of visible progress that year, as I was doing a lot of high level work and my brain was exhausted.).
My husband's cousin spent a small fortune on a kitchen renovation a couple of years ago, after deeming her 20-year-old kitchen "dated." To my eye, there was absolutely nothing wrong with it -- the cupboards were beautiful, solid cherrywood. She now has a gleaming all-white kitchen with a huge long island/eating counter that looks like every other kitchen in the magazines/HGTV right now. I guess it's more "in style," but it has no warmth to it.
We lived in the same house for 26 years -- it was built in 1983, and we never did anything in the kitchen aside from removing wallpaper/painting, and replacing a few appliances. The inside cupboard shelving was cheap covered particleboard that sagged, but the cupboard doors themselves, while rather 80s-looking in design, were solid oak. When we started thinking of selling the house, I knew we'd have to do something with the kitchen, but the thought of sinking tens of thousands of dollars into a renovation that we probably weren't going to enjoy very long (while enduring the MESS and inconvenience while the work was done!) was not appealing. We wound up doing a "facelift" -- we restained the cupboards (some people suggested we paint them, but I didn't like the idea of covering up good solid wood), changed the handles and added a tile backsplash, as well as a new range hood and lighting fixtures. It wouldn't have been featured in any magazine layout, but it did brighten things up, which was good enough, in my books...!
I feel like it's just going to constantly oscillate between light and dark kitchens, warm and cool, ornate and sleek. It's also impossible to be off trend because the manufacturers only sell what's trendy. Good luck putting down a floor right now that isn't wide plank and in a few I'm sure it will be a very dated floor width