confession

i've been stewing this morning, worrying that i'm coming across as some holier than thou, shunning consumerism because i'm above it or something.  i feel i should come clean and admit to a deep & abiding love of THINGS.  i'm not a compulsive shopper by any means, but i definitely covet many, many things. i like being surrounded by lovely stuff and i like my environment to reflect this. i collect, i create wish lists, i buy.  

as a design lover, i pay a lot of attention to shleter mags and have a slough of online boutiques and sites that i obssess over.  i save files and files worth of magazine clippings of cool objects, furniture, homes, and gardens.  i guess i subscribe to a belief that the stuff you have tells a story about you.  it's like a character reference and helps describe the person you are; your likes, your dislikes, etc.  i fully admit that i assign status (power?) to things.  to me, there is a difference between someone who owns a 50s Eames chair and one who owns a laz-E boy recliner.  

i guess that means i'm a snob, but the real story is that there seems to be some subjective hierarchy we attach to stuff. having spent 4 years working in a design + decorative arts museum ( yay for cooper-hewitt!!), i know i'm not the only person out there thinking this.  there are whole degrees devoted to studying material culture and why we glorify one object over another.  some of it is individual taste or the quality of craftsmanship, sure, but there are definite trends that occur across a culture. things that people must have in order to fit in. i mean look at the television in our society! if you don't own one, you are making a radical statement, even a political one.  technology and the conveniences that stem from it, probably have pushed these notions of what we need to have a lot further.

i know humans have always been collectors and accumulators. (think of egyptians & their tombs.) but it does seem that  the meaning of 'stuff' and the amount of stuff we think we need to have has only increased over time. i read something recently about the herbert hoover administration in the late 20s introducing the whole concept of "the standard of living" , which was basically an idea created to convince americans that they had something else to work for beyond satisfying their basic needs and therefore ensuring the government a useful workforce.  the administration did a survey on people's  reactions to the standard of living idea and it basically proved that wants are almost insatiable. once people fulfill their basic needs they turn to fulfilling their wants and wants create newer wants and on and on the cycle goes.  

this post is all over the map, but i guess what i'm trying to remind myself of is that there will always be great stuff out there to consume and collect and admire. i will always want to add new things that help me define myself and my space. and i will always want to be endlessly upgrading to the new, new thing. but what i'd like to do (and hopefully this month of scarcity will help me do) is to get back to a mode of thinking where i can differentiate between my needs and my wants. focus on the needs, pepper in the wants.    i think that may just be a lost art. but it is one i certainly hope i can master.