Res utenda datur *

Some online buddies of mine were discussing the tragedy of relatives who died with pretty candles still unburnt, fancy yarns sealed in bags with the receipts, good china packed away in dust covers, clothes "too nice to wear" in the back of the closet with the tags still on them.

"Things are for use," one of them opined. And that pretty much summed up the position of the group.

Many on this blog have had occasion to quote Sir Terry Pratchett's character Granny Weatherwax that "Sin … is when you treat people as things." And I can't argue with that. But there is also, if not "sin", at least grievous waste when we treat things as something other than, well, things.

There is nothing wrong with planning for the future, or delayed gratification. And of course, there's a big difference between "using" and "abusing" objects; proper maintenance and care will greatly extend the time you can enjoy anything, from a car to a coffeemaker.

Still, "things are for use" is a message I need to remember more, as I look at my life. I have too many treasures, toys, and treats laid up for myself on earth. Maybe I'll take the kids and shoot off that model rocket out behind the elementary school this weekend. Maybe I'll dig my "emergency chocolate" out of the sock drawer, and make brownies tonight. Maybe I'll get great-great Aunt Edith's diamond ring out of the safe deposit box and wear it to work.

Maybe I'll get all of the "good" candles out of storage, and put them on the mantel, and burn them until there's nothing left but puddles of wax and memories of beauty.

What things have you been putting off using?

--hapax

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* (Apologies to Justinian, from whose classic legal compilation, the Institutes, the title was stolen quite out of context.)

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Comments

[MercuryBlue]

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/EllieMurasaki
http://elliemurasaki.dvdaf.com/owned

I don't actually want to admit how much of both those lists I own but haven't read/watched. It's a staggering proportion, let's leave it at that.

(I may have a problem.)

[Timothy (TRiG)]

Oh what a fascinating thought. I don't have much, because I'm in a rented place and don't have much room. But I do have an awful lot of books in storage at my parents' place. I am trying to get through them, though. I'm not deliberately saving them up. In fact, I don't really have "best" things. I think that's more likely to happen when you have your own space.

I read somewhere (here?) recently about a man who keeps an unread Dickens novel constantly by his bed, to be read in case of terminal illness. Or something like that. I've forgotten the details.

TRiG.

(MyOpenId is messing me up, so I'm signed out again.)

[Coleslaw]

I have a lot of candles I haven't burned. I'm not sure why I buy them if I'm not going to burn them, but I seem to have a rule stuck in my head that home must have candles. I also once kept a thick pad of sticky notes that a friend gave me for years without using them. I think I finally donated them. I'm bad with office supplies that way. At work I could never make myself throw out crayons, so I must have had at least a dozen unused boxes by time I retired, because of course I wouldn't use the new ones until I used the (100 or so) old ones up. People were always giving us note pads, too, so those accumulated in heaps.

Bath items are another thing I'm bad about using. (Yes, I do bathe, but I take showers with my preferred soap.) I used to get a lot of gift baskets of toiletries at Christmas and I finally gave a bunch of them away, too. I'm slowly working my way through some bath salts a friend in Hungary gave me, though. They were arranged very prettily in the bottle like a sand painting, so it was tempting to keep them that way but I finally decided to use them the way they were intended.

My big problem is the things I only need once in a while, but when I need them, I need them. Like my spring form cake pan. There is no substitute fro one, but I don't make cheesecakes more than every two or three years, if then.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

"My big problem is the things I only need once in a while, but when I need them, I need them. Like my spring form cake pan. There is no substitute fro one, but I don't make cheesecakes more than every two or three years, if then."

Yep. And the sheet cake pan that I only make cakes in for baptisms, first communions, and graduations. And the big trays and the punch bowl for parties. And the fondue set. And the pretty Japanese dishes for serving sushi on. etc. At least I decided we'd use the good china.

[Catrijn]

As someone with a significant amount of fancy yarn sealed in bags: I'm knitting as fast as I can! :-) And trying not to let my purchasing outpace my use, like I did for a few years. I do generally agree, though. The kitchen doesn't have enough space at the moment (it's a small rental, and I expect to be here less than a year), but I really do want to bring out the china for more regular use. And use the crystal whenever I open a bottle of wine - that's seldom enough anyway, might as well use the good stuff.

[Mike Timonin]

We have scraps of fabric which periodically get used or donated, but my wife seems to have a thing about buying fabric remnants. I have papers - hand outs for class that I printed too many of, and which I will print too many of next time I need them too. We are a cluttered people. I am trying hard to actually read all of the books I own, and ditch the ones I don't want to keep - I set that as my Lenten burden, and have continued the process.

When we moved, my wife mused on facebook about getting rid of the china we had been storing in the basement which she didn't like and which we never used. Her mom got on her case about how that had been her (my wife's) grandmother's good china, and how we couldn't get rid of it. She finally conceded that we could use it for every day. So we are. We've already broken two of the saucers, which we use for cat food.

[Nenya]

I just did this with a box of stickers I have--stuck a whole bunch, profligately, on the birthday card going to my middle sister. And why not? They will probably make her smile, which they won't do hoarded in the box where only I know about them.

I still had a pang when I did it, though--what if I run out? what if there aren't enough when I need them and I can't afford any more? Which when it comes down to it is why I save & don't use a lot of things like that. It comes down to a sort of trust in the universe or in the future, for me. I will, probably, be able to afford three dollars for those nice stickers when these run out. (Even if it means choosing between that and something else, that week.) And that pear I have in the fruit bowl: yes, that's the only pear I'm going to have available this week, but if I wait too long to eat it, it will go bad and then I won't be able to have it at all--so why not eat it on the night I'm hungry for it?

Like Mike, I culled my books this summer when I finally got a bookshelf to put them on. If I don't want to use them, someone else probably will. But I'm still amazed how many books I have, even on my small shelf, even being a voracious reader, that I haven't sat down and read yet. How odd.

Finishing up a supper right now that includes the spicy brown mustard my girlfriend left here the last time she visited--which I probably won't be able to afford to get more of when it's gone. But hey--why not enjoy it while I have it? There will be something else tasty when it's gone, and even if there weren't, the memory is important.

[Kirala]

Art supplies. I'm no artist (by which I mean that creating visual art usually interests me approximately ten hours out of a year, so I have no investment in the craft), but I do enjoy playing with pretty pastels and fancy sketchbooks on occasion. I realized a while back that I'm about six pages in to a sketchbook I started ten years ago. Even a dabbler ought to use her art supplies more often than that.

Musical instruments. I use these more frequently, but I'm more embarrassed by usage there because I do consider myself an amateur musician until I realize that I've logged maybe two hours of practice in the past as many months.

Fresh garlic. Actually, any number of produce items that I buy intending to cook that week and find spoiled a month and a half later. Commitment to a course of action, I have it not.

[Gotchaye]

For me, there's not a bright line between “things for use” and “things for appreciation”, and I expect that everyone has at least a few things that they keep around only for appreciation.

I picked up a Lego Super Star Destroyer last year. Putting it together was, frankly, tedious, but now I've got a Lego Super Star Destroyer sitting on the top shelf of my desk at work. And it's awesome. I don't do anything with it, and don't intend to ever do anything with it. I suppose one could say that the use of such things just is to be appreciated, but that makes this even more complicated – who gets to decide which objects are which?

I don't knit, but, if I did, I might keep some particularly fancy yarn around for a very long time (maybe forever) without doing anything with it. Occasionally, I might think about the yarn, and imagine all the nice things I (or someone else) could make with it. I would get pleasure from this. Maybe I'm also bad at knitting, and keep the fancy yarn around as a “maybe someday I'll be up to the challenge of making the perfect thing from this yarn”, even though maybe I also know that I'm not actually going to spend the time needed to get better. It'd be a daydreaming aid, and there's nothing wrong with that. And I don't see it as necessarily a sad thing to die without ever having used the yarn, and looking back on one's dreams with fondness instead of regret.

There can be pleasure in delaying gratification in itself, especially if we also kinda know that the actual experience of using the thing wouldn't live up to the dream. And some things can be enjoyed even without any intention to ever use them. This can be taken to an unhealthy degree, but there's nothing wrong with enjoying possessing a thing for the sake of possessing it, especially if the thing isn't rare such that your possession of it doesn't deprive others of anything (really, I'd say that owning a one-of-a-kind piece of famous art is a lot more problematic than keeping fancy yarn with no intention of using it).

[P J Evans]

Bless me, mother, for I have committed Stash.

(I have enough sock yard for a lifetime's use of socks.)

[MercuryBlue]

I don't knit either, but I know people who do, and every so often the subject of learning to knit comes up, and my friends are like "use the expensive stuff when you're learning! the cheap crap will just frustrate you!" So, uh.

[Kirala]

my friends are like "use the expensive stuff when you're learning! the cheap crap will just frustrate you!" So, uh.

Hah. I learned fine on the cheap stuff; what I never did was finish a project, because I had no interest in a scratchy, lumpy scarf. But once I had given up on the cheap project, I got some midrange yarn and had quite a good time knitting a scarf with it. (Also got my mother, my sisters, and my grandmothers to each knit a row, so despite the fact that it's a mess it has Sentimental Value.) So, it depends whether you care about making your learning work into an actual project.

[Gotchaye]

Learn something new every day, I guess.

Actually, speaking of stickers, I still have the stickers that are supposed to go on that Lego thing. I have a vague half-intention of putting them on it someday, but I know I'm never going to. Because if they go on just slightly crooked the whole thing is ruined. Even though the stickers mostly go inside where they're not visible unless you pull off the top of the ship.

I'm not going to throw the stickers away, but until they invent perfect sticker placing robots those stickers aren't getting anywhere near my precious toy. I guess I don't find that at all tragic; I still get a lot of enjoyment out of the thing, and I even get some enjoyment out of the stickers.

I've never had the book problem people have been describing here. I have boxes upon boxes of the things, but I've read virtually all of them, and the ones I haven't read were gifts that I didn't want to read or books I started and didn't like. Admittedly, my Kindle is getting very cluttered, but I don't think I'm expected to read everything that I download for free from Amazon.

[Rakka]

Saving things for the right occasion reminds me of another piece by PTerry, in Carpe Jugulum; you don't wait for the right moment, you make it. Yes to burning the pretty candles! And yes to using the good china, even if it is one of a kind memento that you can't replace if something gets broken, if using it now gives you joy. I use clayware made by my now-late father - some of the small plates have gotten broken over the last 10 years, but there are plenty of those, in various colours, and it gives me solace to use the things he made. Sure, they would be safer if not in use... but for what purpose? I won't be having any offspring and when I died they'd just go to someone who never even knew him, and meant nothing to them.

[Anonymous]

@MercuryBlue: It's more important to learn to knit on a light coloured yarn (as opposed to dark) than expensive vs. cheap. You also want a yarn that looks fairly uniform (no variations in width like some of the fancier yarns have, no tinsel hanging off it. Colour variations are okay, though.) With a light coloured yarn, you can see the stitches very clearly, and that's important when you don't know what your stitches are supposed to look like because you'll have a lot more trouble figuring out what to do if it's hard to see the stitches. Light coloured yarns come in all price ranges.

You should buy the cheapest yarn that has a texture you like. Bernat makes some really nice, soft yarns, and they're on the cheap end of the scale, maybe a step up from the cheapest, but it's a small step up. Go to a store like Michael's or JoAnn's, find the cheap bins, and touch the yarns thoroughly to find one that you like. No point spending hours making something that you won't end up wearing because it's uncomfortable. For your first project, a medium yarn or a thicker yarn is better than a really thin yarn.

No point in getting a really expensive yarn to learn on, unless you've inherited someone else's stash of yarn and that's the yarn you've had to work with. Your first project probably won't look that great. Your stitches will be uneven and you may have some dropped stitches and you may find at the end of it that you made a lot of mistakes way back at the beginning which you're in no mood to correct after all this time.

On topic: I have quite a few books, but I do reread all of them. I receive books a lot less frequently than it takes to read them. I do have a lot of free ebooks on my computer (most of these are books from Project Gutenburg which are out of copyright), many of which I haven't gotten around to reading but I might someday. I don't have a lot of nice things that I've collected but am not using. I do have a lot of useless things that I haven't managed to throw out. I tend to save aluminum foil to reuse it a few times in the oven, but I do throw it out if it gets dusty or is visibly dirty beyond a few crumbs. I have a bit of stationary, but it was a gift and I do use it up, slowly, it just takes time because I don't write many letters by hand anymore.

Generally, if I have enough of something, I won't buy more until what I have starts wearing out. I have more clothes than I'd like to have, because people tend to give me clothes they no longer want, but most of the jeans I have are threadbare in the inner thigh region and soon there will be gaping holes. So, I'll be buying a new pair sometime in the next few months.

[cjmr, on her son's netbook]

The other thing touching yarn in the store tells you is if you will have a touch sensitivity to it/are allergic to it. I can't knit with or wear wool, but there are other fibers that I can wear, but not knit with.

[Mike Timonin]

I don't knit, but, if I did, I might keep some particularly fancy yarn around for a very long time (maybe forever) without doing anything with it. Occasionally, I might think about the yarn, and imagine all the nice things I (or someone else) could make with it.

I've watched experienced knitters knit almost a complete sock out of very nice yarn, decide they don't like it, take it all apart, and start over - because the yarn was too nice for the completed sock.

[Izzy]

I have a number of plates and teacups and so forth from my great-grandmother, which I'll probably start using more once I get to my new place. Of course, I also have teacups from my grandmother, and my mom is sending me a bunch of plates too*, so I should probably just have some tea parties or something.

Just weeded out the books to the stuff I really feel I'll re-read.

And will start wearing jewelry more, including the two good rings I have. Although I should get at least one of them resized a little before I do that--I do worry that it'll fall off my finger sometime.

*Moving roughly around the same time that my parents are retiring and moving themselves leads to this sort of thing.

[sarah]

Books. There are books I've picked up just to have but that I'm probably not going to sit down and read. (That collection of Alexander Pope's works? Yeah...)

[Sixwing]

Both Six!Spouse and I collect certain toys. The sets don't overlap at all, more's the pity, but both of us have shelves devoted to displaying them.

They don't get played with (much) but they do get admired, handled, and moved about fairly regularly, and it would be awfully hard-hearted of me to disallow the nieblings from playing with toys that they are highly unlikely to damage in the slightest.

I have an unfortunate tendency to like to create things I can't/won't use, though, so I tend to accumulate finished products, then find a reason to get rid of a bunch of them. Really need to find a better way to handle that cycle...

[Amaryllis]

Books. For instance, The Harvard Five-foot Shelf, in actual physical matched volumes, taking up a shelf and a half, because I don't have a five-foot shelf to put it on.

All of our candles, good and not-so-good, are old. Because the thought of actually using them induces panic in Spouse, who's convinced that the house will burn down immediately.

My big problem is the things I only need once in a while, but when I need them, I need them. Like my spring form cake pan. There is no substitute fro one, but I don't make cheesecakes more than every two or three years, if then.
Ah yes, we know that one well. And I have a cheesecake pan like that too. It gets used once a year: strawberry cheesecake for Mothers' Day.

And the big punchbowl for May Day and the wooden goblets for Wassail and the tablecloths only used for Thanksgiving or Christmas and the big cookie tins for Christmas cookies...and so on. It'd be simpler if we just stopped celebrating holidays, but where's the fun in that?

When we moved, my wife mused on facebook about getting rid of the china we had been storing in the basement which she didn't like and which we never used. Her mom got on her case about how that had been her (my wife's) grandmother's good china
There's a box of my late mother-in-law's best china in a totally inaccessible spot behind the wall, just in case my daughter ever decides she wants it. And then there are the collections, the pewter mugs and wooden carvings and brass plates, that Someone has been accumulating over the years... but I can't talk, as long as I've got all those books. Then again, some of the books that haven't been read in forever are his.

On the bright side, we are actually, this summer, getting rid of Stuff. Stuff that isn't treasures, stuff that hasn't been used for years if not decades, but was kept because "I might need it some day/it's too good to throw away/it was my father's/it's cool!" Until I was starting to worry that we'd end up on an episode of Hoarders. It's hardest on Spouse, because he has the hoarding gene for most things more than I do, and most of the Stuff that we tossed was originally his. So now I guess I'd better prune the bookshelves and the sweater collection, in solidarity.

[storiteller]

When we were creating our wedding registry, we purposely registered for fine dining plates that we intended to use every day. We chose Denby, which makes beautiful pottery. Even though it was expensive, I'm so glad we chose it. They've held up wonderfully well, despite the fact that I've whacked a couple plates on our countertop by mistake. And their beauty makes me happy - eating on "nice" plates makes every meal seem a little nicer.

In contrast, my in-laws have Christmas plates that they only take out for the holidays. But during the month of December, they use them for every meal. I think finding a set period of time each year to use the china is a nice compromise if you can't stand using the "good plates" all of the time.

In terms of things we have and don't use, books are by far the worse. I hate giving books away, even though I hardly ever reread them. I've got boxes of books from when I was a kid that I'm keeping to read to my children! I don't buy a tremendous amount, but there are a bunch on my shelf that still need to be read. The former graduate school books are probably the worst offenders.

[Kit Whitfield]

I've watched experienced knitters knit almost a complete sock out of very nice yarn, decide they don't like it, take it all apart, and start over - because the yarn was too nice for the completed sock.

In defence of knitters, that doesn't mean you won't re-use the yarn later. You know an awful lot more about the yarn once you've knitted with it than you did before you started.

I make a habit of knitting small things, like flowers I wear as hair ornaments, so I can break into the ball and have at least a small keepsake of the yarn no matter what else I do.

[bluefrog]

I don't knit, but I do have a considerable (one entire cabinet plus three and a half totes)of quilt fabric, which I am turning into quilts as fast as weather (sometimes it's just too hot to hand quilt) and arthritis permit. Luckily, when the relatives start running when they see me coming with another one, I can donate quilts to the local guild to give away.

I've given away a ton of books and household items, shifted heirlooms to my kids, and sworn to prune still more so that my heirs and assigns don't greet my death with "Oh, God, what are we going to do with this stuff?"

[Caretaker of Cats]

Oh, stash. I have yarn. I have beads. When deciding on a new project, I appreciate having stash, but in between new projects, it can be an organizational problem. I also have book accumulation... issues. I'm currently working on a shawl using long-stashed yarn, which makes me feel extra-productive somehow.

[Mike Timonin]

I've watched experienced knitters knit almost a complete sock out of very nice yarn, decide they don't like it, take it all apart, and start over - because the yarn was too nice for the completed sock.

In defence of knitters, that doesn't mean you won't re-use the yarn later. You know an awful lot more about the yarn once you've knitted with it than you did before you started.

Oh yeah - in the case I was thinking of, she immediately started a new sock with the same yarn but a more fancy pattern.

[Izzy]

Having just moved most of my things...man, I hear this.

Have put myself on official project moratorium: I don't start anything new until I finish what I'm working on, and I don't buy new fabric until I get through the three bags of stuff I have.

The rest of my stuff...I think I'll use it, but damn is there ever a lot.

[Amaryllis]

Here's a brief NY Times discussion of The Way We Live Now: Drowning in Stuff.

[The atudy] is full of intriguing data points about the number of possessions the families owned (literally, thousands), much of it children’s toys. Women’s stress-hormone levels spiked when confronted with family clutter; the men’s, not so much. Finally, there was a direct relationship between the amount of magnets on refrigerators and the amount of stuff in a household.

And

The inflow of objects is relentless. The outflow is not. We don’t have rituals, mechanisms, for getting rid of stuff.

Maybe, instead of relying on the ad hoc calls from charities and such, we need an annual Pass On Your Stuff holiday. Like an inverse Christmas, or a community swap meet: leave what you want, take what you want, with giant dumpsters set up to receive the useless, worn-out stuff, and a truck from the thrift store to take away anything good that's left at the end of the day. And with music and food to soothe the anxieties of parting with Stuff-I-might-need-someday.

[Mmy]

@Amaryllis: Maybe, instead of relying on the ad hoc calls from charities and such, we need an annual Pass On Your Stuff holiday.

We are on the list of a charity that calls four times a year "anything for the truck?." You put the stuff out on your front porch and they swing by and pick it up. The regular calls remind you and it is nice to have such a convenient way of passing things on.

[cjmr]

"Women’s stress-hormone levels spiked when confronted with family clutter; the men’s, not so much. Finally, there was a direct relationship between the amount of magnets on refrigerators and the amount of stuff in a household."

I identify with both those sentences. I think we probably have 3-4 dozen magnets between our two fridges--not counting the alphabet and number magnets.

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I spent the last six months removing outgrown baby toys (one or two at a time) from youngest's room every time we cleaned in there. I had them in a box in the garage waiting until the box was full so that I could take it to the thrift store to donate what I could. The rest was then going to go in storage until the next parish yard sale.

She found the box last week. Now I'll be starting over again.

My children are constantly amazed that when they are cleaning their room I don't get mad at them if they want to throw away/give away toys.

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In our old neighborhood we put things out to the curb for donation trucks (or just with a FREE! sign often. Here we don't get enough traffic for the FREE! sign and the one charity that does call always seems to want to pick up a day that we will be out of town for the days before. Nothing says "No one is home here" quite like a charity box sitting at the foot of the drive for a week.

[Mike Timonin]

leave what you want, take what you want

We've done this with books, and we always end up taking more than we leave, which is a problem.

As you know, we've recently moved. The new apartment is actually smaller than the old one, but it has closets. We tried to get rid of stuff, we really did, but we still have boxes of books with no shelves to put them on.

There's a scene in (I think) Griffith and Sabine in which Griffith describes his childhood home as being occupied with stacks of books everywhere, like a labrinth of books. We're not quite at that stage.

[Amaryllis]

we always end up taking more than we leave, which is a problem.

Yeah, there is that.

We get calls from the charities too, and I've left my share of boxes on the front walk for the trucks to pick up. But what I'm looking for is an Occasion, something to celebrate giving away/getting rid of, that balances out the satisfactions of being given to, or buying.

Which sounds ungenerous, doesn't it? I mean, for the same items. I like giving Christmas and birthday presents as much as getting them (sometimes, more). And I'd rather give useable stuff to charity than just to toss it out. And there's no point in hanging on to things that don't work or that you don't need.

But, can we invent a holiday that'll make me feel better about getting rid of the sweater my mother-in-law hand-knitted for me twenty-five pounds ago? Or the dust-catching little statuette that my daughter gave me for Christmas when she was eight? Or the hats that my husband never wears that remind him of his father? Can we invent something to take away the sting of "I spent money on that and now it doesn't work any more and I have to throw it out?" Or worse yet, "I spent money on that and it sort of works, only not very well and I don't really need it anyway, but I still feel wasteful getting rid of it."

(Boy, talk about your first-world problems...but it is a problem, nonetheless.)

[Froborr]

Ooh, I'm not the only person in the world who read* Griffith and Sabine! It was awesome, did you read the two sequels?

I went on a clutter-annihilating purge a couple of years ago, when we moved from a spacious two-bedroom to a small studio. I had a couple of tests:

1) Is this object information rich? (Books, CDs, computer software) If yes, keep.

2) Is this object going to generate large amounts of happiness relative to its size? (Games, important memorabilia) If yes, keep.

3) Do I actually want this? If yes, keep.

4) Everything else: If it has sentimental value to someone, is that person willing to take it? If yes, give it to them.

Everything else went to Goodwill. Question 4 was easy for me, hard for my fiancee; she kept saying "But if I get rid of this, Aunt So-and-So will be upset!" and I kept saying, "Well, is Aunt So-and-So going to pay for storage?"**

*Looked at? Experienced? Explored? I'm not sure "read" is precisely the word for a book that relies on the tactile and visual experience as much as the text.

**Well, the first time. After that it got more vulgar.

[Mike Timonin]

I adored Griffith and Sabine, and the two sequels. Nick Bantock is a genius. There's also the Morning Star Trilogy, which I'm not sure if I've read or not.

I think what I liked about the books is what I enjoy about doing historical research - I love reading other peoples' mail.