The Math of Practicality, The Importance of the Couch
I’ve been thinking a lot about practicality lately, which I’m sure surprises people. I don’t think I ever, in my entire life, have been described as “practical”. I can see my parents laughing at the dinner table as I muse very seriously, “Practicality has been on my mind recently.”
In many ways, I’m not a practical person, and it’s quite obvious (there’s a joke in here about an English degree somewhere). But aside from career choice and my tendency to always wear the wrong shoes, I think my home is the best example of this, the kitchen especially. I’ve bought paper towels on and off for the past several years, but I’ve finally committed to not buying them at all. I bought a bunch of green-striped bar towels in bulk, turned old t-shirts from Catholic youth retreats I used to work into dusting rags, and now I finally have a set of nice dinner napkins for when people come over. I don’t buy Ziploc bags either, instead using old takeout containers, mason jars, randomly acquired Tupperware, and one Stasher bag that was an Easter gift from my mother that I treat with reverence and respect, a prized storage possession. Nothing gets put in a disposable container in my home, which means quite a lot of washing, but I have a dishwasher, so it can’t be that bad, right?
If you’ve been in my house or spoken to me for longer than ten minutes, you know I have an obsession with vintage dishware, particularly jadeite and Pyrex. It’s beautiful to look at, of course, but you can’t run it through the dishwasher, not if you want to take care of it. Add to that the vintage china my mother keeps showing up with when she comes to my house, and a quarter, maybe more, of what’s in my cabinets needs to be washed by hand. I finally have a dishwasher, and while that manages to stay full, I still find myself washing by hand much of the time.
None of this is “practical”. But how am I even using that word exactly? Everything in my kitchen has a functional use and all of it gets used. That’s the primary definition. Then there’s the definition of “likely to succeed or be effective in real circumstances; feasible.”
I guess when I say practical, a lot of the time what I’m really referring to is “ease”.
I’ve realized lately I have a habit of making things difficult for myself. I’m constantly tying myself up in knots, wrapping myself up in some new endeavor or problem, mentally and emotionally and in my day to day tasks. I complain a lot about money, here in this newsletter and everywhere else, and I know we’re all feeling the sting of the economic mess we’re in. But part of what I’ve been thinking about is how practicality and ease are impossibly tied up with money and the ability to dispose.
For example, maybe I’d have more time to do the things I cared about if I only used disposable items in my kitchen. In the moment we’re living in, time is more valuable than ever, and we’re expected to use every moment to do something, to produce something. So maybe if I used only disposable items, I’d be “time-rich”. But would it actually be cheaper, buying paper products every week or so? And of course, there’s the implications of the mountain of trash I’d be producing, so I have to weigh the benefits of having more time not only against the literal cost, but the environmental cost, which is something that’s important to me. And yes, maybe I’d be time-rich, but what would I then do with that time? Would I actually be able to use it in a way that makes me happy, or would it just be tied up with more frantic math, more work in some way?
I feel like every day of my life is made up of these impossible calculations, measuring need against want against time against money. I have never been good at math, and now I find myself every day having to do impossibly complex math with emotional and physical stakes every day. My skin is suffering potentially because of the hardness of the water I’m using to shower, so maybe I should buy a filter for the shower head to fix that. But how much is that going to cost? Does the benefit outweigh that? Is not feeling itchy and irritated and dirty, but only slightly because I’m not really suffering am I, really worth spending money on? My dishware makes me happy, but is that happiness worth the time it spends to care for it? How do you quantify that happiness?
I know that, in a sense, calculations like these have always existed. You have to measure what you want and what you need and then compare it to what you can actually do, and then you have to make decisions. But when did practicality in harmony with joy begin to feel so absolutely impossible? I feel like I’m staring at a mess of string and newspaper clippings in the back of my closet, trying to draw thru-lines and make connections, drinking Scotch and trying to pin down the conspiracy when I really should be at work even though I haven’t slept in three days. It shouldn’t be this hard to make things easier for yourself, to meet your needs, without killing the things that make you happy, right?
If I were looking for a symbol of what I want, the level of serenity I would like to reach, I would look to my couch.
My couch is simple, and better yet it was free. It’s a hand-me-down from my cousin, much loved and used by her three small children. It’s a neutral white, but everything is a slipcover, meaning it’s easy to wash, which is important when you have children, but also when you’re just a person who’s alive and messy and also has a cat. But most importantly, I cannot tell you how impossibly comfortable this thing is. It’s soft and has room for a whole person, even two. I’ve fallen asleep on it often, and it’s comfortable enough that I don’t feel bad about offering it to guests
The non-practical part of me would love a pink velvet couch, or a gorgeous French Colonial antique. But instead I have a hand-me-down that’s free and functional. You sacrifice style for substance, for a space that’s easy to clean and easy to inhabit, because you know you’re messy and you know you love to have people over. The mental calculations of that are easy. The trade-off of that is easy, because it doesn’t end in misery or require impossible weighing of pros and cons.
How do we get back to a point where, maybe not everything, but most things, are as easy as deciding what you really want from your couch? Is this something I am responsible for on my own? Am I making things harder on myself all on my own, or is there some outside pressure we need to address? How do we even begin to do that? Who will give me money so I can stop bothering you all with these silly questions that keep me up at night?
I always seem to leave you with more questions than answers, so forgive me. But it’s been a long week already, and I find myself daydreaming about a nap on that couch, which says something, I think, though I’m not sure what.