I really don't like new stuff. In this holiday season, I have generally avoided shopping. An hour with Miss Em at JC Penneys (a middlebrow shopping venue) and Marshall's (supposedly discount) was enough for me. So much nice stuff! So cheap! No wonder we all have too much.
With my predilection for the imperfect and abandoned, I had a moment of wonderful harmonic convergence in this season of the new and shiny. First, I read metscan's blog, which I haven't had time to do for a while. In a series of pictures, she shows how she both hid, embellished, and drew attention to various imperfections in her living space.
Today I read in the New York Times of a collectible heretofore unknown to me: the make-do. Back in the day, people broke plates and the like and reconstructed them in artful ways.
I have written about the scads of cashmere I find at thrifts, rejected because of a single pinhole. A tiny chip on a plate is enough to consign it to the dustbin. An antique quilt with a bit of fraying is a tiny fraction of the price of a perfect one.
I've always loved buying used books, especially if they have notes from an intelligent reader. I learn so much from them.
I think the cult of perfection may be a particularly American thing. And certainly the cultivation of the imperfect may be the epitome of frugality.
So which came first for me? The love of the imperfect? Or the frugality?
Where do you fall on the perfect/imperfect continuum?
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