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You kept your couch--for how long (12 July 2009)

couch

photo by House of Sim

If you're still wearing the same clothes you bought ten years ago, then part of you hasn't changed through all that time. Too bad--Since you weren't all that to begin with, we were hoping to see a change.

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Look again--Some people noticed, travelingferret, and they might have appreciated the recognition. But yeah, the design is good. Also, though some are trying to defend IDEA goods by pointing out that they can last the long while, I believe more effort ought to be put in defending the idea that the nature of their composition and their cost, make them easier to imagine as only temporary goods. Goods well suited for who you are NOW, that is, constituted so you don't feel you have to keep them around forever, or pass them on to other people they no longer well suit, either. You can get rid of them, as you should anything that remains static, while you go about life's primary business--growing into something richer and more wonderful--different.

What we need to do is really get good at re-using the materials. You buy knowing you'll be breaking in on down soon enough, to be put back into something relevant and new. Planned obsolescence is moved by the wrong energy, but can be "re-made" into a philosophy which redeems change and growth, that is, into something rather well usefully suited to work against an age increasingly driven to redeem stuff that should be well out of our face by now, but was, unfortunately, well built to last. More talk about the good old days and the crappy youth of today, grandpa? Lovely, can't get enough, as they say. . . Say, How're your bones doin', gramps?

Link: "IKEA is as bad as Wal-Mart" (Stephanie Zacharek)

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