A Life Less Throwaway. Tara Button
comes up with new colour schemes and shapes which the media proclaim to be ‘good taste’, is this a good reason to change what we have?
I would say it isn’t, as taste is in the eye of the taster. You simply can’t say someone has ‘better taste’ than someone else. That would be like saying someone’s preference for vanilla ice cream was better than someone else’s preference for strawberry.
Our preferences can change over time, of course, which is why it’s important to dig deeper into our true taste when we choose our products in the first place. More on this later, but for now, let’s carry on with Christine’s list of reasons to chuck out our stuff.
More efficiency
‘More efficiency’ is something to strive for, but unless the product in question is a vehicle, appliance or insulation, this isn’t a reason to jettison what we already have. Also, we’ve come to the point now where energy-efficiency improvements in appliances have plateaued, so unless your current model is very old or polluting, it’s always better environmentally and financially to hold on to the one you have. The carbon and money you’d save with the more efficient model would be wiped out by the energy and money needed for the new purchase. If you want to buy something new based on efficiency, wait for the great leaps forward that happen less often, such as moving to solar energy.
Better workmanship
Changing products regularly is a sure-fire way to undermine good workmanship, and sadly, workmanship standards have been proven to decline when we get into the habit of obsolescence. This is partly due to a decrease in the price and an increase in mass production and partly because there’s no point in putting proper craftsmanship into objects that will be thrown away in a couple of years.
Improved health and hygiene
This is a common marketing ploy for new household products. Companies have done a great job of convincing us that every cranny and surface in our homes is crawling with dangerous microbes. However, much of this fear-mongering is simply to sell us things. For example, washing your hands with normal soap and water is just as effective as the antibacterial soap sold at jumped-up prices.7
In the twenty-first century, we bleach and disinfect everything in sight, but just as we all have ‘good bacteria’ in our gut, we also need them on our skin for it to function properly. There is also evidence to suggest that our over-clean homes aren’t allowing our children’s immune systems to develop properly. Kids who grow up on farms and are subjected to the widest range of bacteria show significantly reduced levels of asthma.8
Nowadays kitchenware and bathroom accessories are often sold as being more hygienic, but as long as basic hygiene is used, such as washing your hands after using the bathroom and making sure that anything touching raw chicken is washed thoroughly, it’s highly unlikely that you’ll get sick from the natural microbes that live in the house. Sterile isn’t something we should be aiming for. For a healthy life, cleanish is clean enough.
Medical innovation is to be encouraged; however, when it comes to health, while a couple of innovations such as car safety and less polluting cookers have had a big impact, I’d recommend turning a deaf ear to the health and fitness industry’s insistence that we need heaps of equipment, supplements and gadgets. We actually require very little to be healthy. Varied unprocessed food, clean water, clean air and a decent amount of activity. Done.
Better fitness
Here, I think Christine means a product that is more ‘fit for purpose’ or more ‘convenient’, and I acknowledge that we want innovations to make products better at what they do.
However, a huge amount of ‘innovation’ around convenience is also change for change’s sake, and much of the innovation overcomplicates products that worked wonderfully in their simplicity. I have an engineer friend for whom this is a personal gripe: ‘A toaster doesn’t need to be able to do your tax return, it just has to make bread warm and a bit brown on each side.’ But often companies will add extra elements to products to justify a higher price tag and to make their product seem new and different from previous models.
My instinct is that most of the time these ‘innovations’ aren’t needed. To prove this to myself, I tried to imagine what my life would be like if all consumer product innovation had stopped in the Thirties, just after Christine’s book came out. Would life be unbearable, or even that different? Not at all. Almost everything in my home would be just as good, if not better, for being made in the Thirties. The only things I think I would miss are the kitchen appliances and boiler, the hoover, my laptop, phone, electric toothbrush and car. Around twelve items. That’s paltry when you think of all the products that have come out since the Thirties. How many of them truly do their jobs better?
HOW TO FIGHT PSYCHOLOGICAL OBSOLESCENCE
Recognise it and call it out
Christine might claim not to have encouraged change for change’s sake, but this is precisely what happened once the idea of psychological obsolescence took hold.
One of the little-understood effects of psychological obsolescence is described by Donald Norman, the author of The Design of Everyday Things. He explains in essence that designers are under pressure to bring out something that looks different every year, so they never get to perfect their creations and make them the best they can be. They have to start from scratch each time so that something different is seen on the shelves.9
We can get designers out of this trap by recognising psychological obsolescence and calling it out when we see it. We should make a distinction between what is genuine progress (switching from a petrol to an electric car) and what is change for change’s sake (a car with a slightly wider grill, or ‘Seventies accents’), and shouldn’t give up on our products to buy new versions unless there is a compelling reason to do so. A 5 per cent better pillow or coffee machine isn’t good enough. If it’s 50–100 per cent better, I might consider it. If it’s solving a problem I actually have, I might be interested. Even if the new design is eco-friendlier, in almost all cases (highly polluting cars aside), it’s more environmentally sound to stick with what we have for as long as possible.
Find your ‘true taste’
As I write this, a decor magazine is urging me to kiss last year’s trends of zig-zag patterns and brushed metal goodbye and give my home a different look and feel with butterflies and folding furniture. But the new trends they’re offering are completely arbitrary and not necessarily a look that resonates with my personal aesthetic.
What you choose to bring into your home can have a profound effect on your mood, energy levels and the time you must spend keeping it in order. Unfortunately, when it comes to buying homeware, psychological obsolescence swings into full force. To counter it, it pays to know your true taste. You may know it already. If not, try the exercise below.
exercise
IDENTIFYING YOUR HOMEWARE AESTHETIC
This exercise will take at least twenty minutes, so make sure you have enough time.
• Grab a notebook or open a computer document. Make two columns: Like and Dislike.
• Now go online and search for images of interiors. Don’t go to an interior magazine, but somewhere like Pinterest, Instagram or Google images where you can see a mix of pictures from all eras, from the Tudors to the present day.
• Spend the first five minutes just seeing the colours in the pictures, nothing else. Start jotting down those you do and don’t like in an interior setting and any colour combinations you like.
• Then spend five minutes on textures and patterns – for example, natural wood, clapboard, granite and polka dots.
• Now spend five minutes on styling – for example, window shutters and jugs of flowers.
• Spend the last five minutes on types of furniture and appliances – for example, wing chairs, log coffee tables and retro fridges.
Keep this list handy or go one step further and make a mood board