Thinking Allowed: New place new things new year

Neither Jakob nor I much likes shopping, unless it involves food of course.

One of the drawbacks of leading a more transient existence is the necessity of household items. We are generally stuck in a position of being more wasteful than we wish. Shipping furniture and household items is costly enough that it never seems worth it. Either we can grow attached to a set of items and pay thousands to have them travel the world with us or we can say a toaster is a toaster a bed a means of sleep and pass on and replace. For this reason we have generally opted to rent furnished places. This too comes at a cost and over time furnishing a place cheaply ends up being equal in cost, especially when you factor in the money reobtained when selling off furniture at the end. For some reason furnished places are rather inspired and are not often set up to sleep large families. Just as well this time around that we got an unfurnished house.

So, I spent a few weeks furnishing our place with what has ended up being what we will call shabby chic or well scuffed wood look. The process was surprising in both expected and unexpected ways. As expected, it confirmed that I like functional and don't like shopping. I find buying things, especially with a herd of kids in tow, exhausting. Unexpectedly, I seem to be an outlier in feeling this way based on the amount of used things bought and sold. Seems even when not moving people sell off their furniture regularly so they can buy more. For example, our rug was bought at a tenth it's original cost because it's owner was going for a new look. It's sad, but at the same time I guess it is great planetarily that there are so many people buying used furniture. Also interesting is that people who live farther from the city core have bigger houses with more excess and sell way more. But the real unexpected bit was how aggressive the online used furniture market is. It's not about goodwill and recycling at all. It is purely driven by economics and bargain hunting. The most impressive example of this involved being informed a couch was unavailable literally two minutes before arriving to purchase it; Someone messaged, found out we were coming, and paid online to secure it before our arrival. Keep in mind that all these homes are on the fringes of the capital territory.There was no apologies as the motto of the used market here is "first in best dressed" leading to an urgency and competitiveness that I really don't care for. These are couches- not gold nuggets or lost children.

Well we have managed to create a house with enough furniture for living so now we are welcoming in the new year with a new house, new (to us anyhow) furniture and a new round of colds and coughs all around.

May your year be filled with lots of honey and little shopping.