Stuff
On the de-growth of household items; re-growth of rib cages; regrets
Look at our new logo & artwork (is it showing up on the header? I’m trying to make it do that…) by the brilliant Momtown citizen Annah Feinberg!
THE SO-CALLED “MY” STUFF
In which admin Alicia Van Couvering defends her packages
My husband and I have been having the same fight for four years, and it is about cleaning (we’ve been raising children together for seven years, so probably we’ve been having the fight for longer, but honestly my memories from life before baby #2 are fading.) For me, the theme of this fight is, “his avoidance of cleaning.” For him, it is “her delusion that I never clean.” We do agree, sort of, on the facts: that our garage is a landfill so crammed with stuff that it’s a safety hazard, and that I spend more of my time putting things away than he does. (Editor’s Note: obviously you already know that the truth is I spend every single second that I am conscious + huge portions of my dreams putting things away.)
Recently, Joel acknowledged that because I get most of the stuff, he thinks of it as my stuff, and this creative perspective on the stuff is what allows his eyes to drift unseeingly across its piles. It means that as he moves through our home, his field of vision remains as smooth and uncluttered as fresh fallen snow, whereas I experience each errant hair clip, lego, band-aid wrapper and wet glob of corn flakes as so many ice picks, jamming themselves straight into my retinas.
It is true that I love stuff, and I am picky about it, which is one reason that I run procurement (the other reason is a word that begins with ‘patriarch-’ and rhymes with ‘bullshit.’) Groceries, lunchboxes, art supplies, underwear; basically anything besides headphones and sports equipment is my department. I love finding huge lots of used toddler socks for $5.65 on Ebay. I love sorting from high to low % of discount on January 3rd. I love bookmarking expensive towels, vintage lamps made out of shells, hand-felted wool slippers. I love love love love love thinking of things to custom order on Etsy, and then waiting ten weeks for whatever crocheted pocket watch or needlepointed book cover I’ve requested to arrive from Poland. I live in fear of being asked to Share My Screen, lest anyone catch a glimpse of the thicket of carts and tabs and sales that I bushwhack through on my way to doing actual work. I had this tendency before having children, but the volume of stuff required now, some in a category I’d never before knew existed (different kinds of containers to fit inside lunchboxes?) supercharged my interest. During the pandemic, I wrote an entire novel about a new mother obsessed with the pleasure of securing all the right stuff for her nursery. (“…at last, she could say with absolute confidence that there was no better stroller than this. Was there any better feeling in the world than knowing, without any doubts, that you had purchased exactly the right thing, and that with it you could create the exactly right experience for the person you loved most in the world?”) Joel said it made him sick to read it.
I agree with him that stuff is bad. The dopamine hamster wheel of marketing and materialism that I willingly hurl myself onto each morning is bad. The idea that there is a “right” version of stuff is indulgent, even evil, strip-mining the planet and the souls of everyone involved in even the most “eco” greenwashed object. But. BUT. Will you believe me when I tell you that the curved strawberry-hulling knife I bought from that weird French kitchen store at the Grove after a dentist appointment last year will make your heart sing every single time you touch it (which is multiple times a day, since it turns out that the main job of raising children is cutting up fruit?) Mine is bright green, but yours can be any color. It’s razor sharp, with a deliciously sinister point at the end. The more I talk about it, the more Joel reads aloud from the book How Degrowth Will Save the World. But if I’m going to spend the next few years snowed in by an avalanche of domestic tasks anyway, then pretty please, bury me in a pile of sharp, perfect little knives.
….
CHICTOWN RECOMMENDS
In which Chictown founder Lucy Kitada reckons with a fashion problem, and recommends a few exactly perfect things
Eight years ago, when I was pregnant with my first child, I was prepared for my body to change. I even understood that it might be insane immediately afterwards. But I was not prepared for certain changes—arguably, the wildest changes—to be permanent. Most shocking was that my rib cage expanded by four inches. Goodbye, closet full of vintage corseted dresses from the 50s and 60s. (Yes, I cried.)
Add a general post-partum malaise to the return to a job where I have to dress up frequently and look professional nearly all the time, and I was lost. But very slowly, I found my way.
NAILS: A GATEWAY DRUG
Nails represented a focus on the details I could control. Plus, no one is looking at the caftan too hard when your fingers are doing this:
THE SOFT BLAZER: NOT A BATHROBE, PER SE
Arguably a sack with arm holes, in a dreamy fabric with a great pattern this is a crucial security blanket with which to ease your way back into the world.
As I ventured back into real clothes (hard pants!) and to figure out what sizing meant now, I got into clothing rentals. I still use Rent the Runway, because I love the review section showing the item on real women. Here is my discount code. Other people I know love Nuuly.
And I learned this important lesson my mother had tried to drill into me, too many times: only buy something if it actually fits you. Tailoring a hem is one thing, but bringing something home that is way too small because you think your bones are going to change back is N/A.
THREE PERFECT THINGS
Agnes B’s perfect t-shirt, 90’s style. Yes it’s expensive but dry them flat and appreciate the thick neckline, which is why they look dressier, how they hold their shape so well, and why they look so nice under (soft, if you want!) blazers.
Trivia about me is that I have not needed to wear moisturizer until, like, this year. I leave this mask on for hours, and it makes me feel hydrated for days.
One denim, two dresses:
Zac Posen for Gap is hitting. This looks shapeless on the model but in person it drapes just right. Selling out but they simply must restock.
Confession: I saw an actress wearing this on an audition tape I was reviewing for work and tracked it down. They make it in many colors and fabrics. Hoping they will make it in leather!!
BONUS perfect things — these perfect travel pants by Frame are about to be discontinued and so are on sale for $91, and this work-appropriate caftan is post-partum and forever.
UNSOLICITED ADVICE
Valley Mom’s own Amanda Zetterstrom-Johnson’s ode to second hand
My mom used to drag me thrifting on weekends. When I was ten, she convinced me to buy a pair of cargo pants and this cool old bomber jacket at a tag sale. I loved that outfit. How comfortable and weird I felt. But I knew that my friends, who wore a uniform of Limited Too crop tops and visible thongs, would prefer something less… used. I threw caution to the wind and wore it on Monday, where my “friends” proceeded to kick off a season of horrific mean-girl bullying that I still talk about in therapy 25 years later. Ever since that fateful day, the joy of the score has been tinged with shame. So when a (new, very nice, very already-had-two-kids-friend) sat across from me when I was six months pregnant and instructed me to buy everything secondhand, I did not listen. Because of those Limited Too bitches, I could not hear her. I wanted to get everything new. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted someone else to look at my registry and buy me the “right” baby swing and breastfeeding pillow. I wanted things so new I could smell the certified-not-to-exist VOC’s off-gassing from the Okeo-Tex EWG-verified organic cotton that my pristine little baby would deserve.
A week after my first son Nathan was born, he had shit, spit up and vomited over everything we’d bought or been gifted. This is when it finally began to sink in: everything you want, someone has wanted before, and now, they don’t want it anymore.
First Regret: TRAVEL CRIBS
My children’s grandparents live in Washington DC and NJ. For the first year of my son’s life, I schlepped a stupid pack-and-play around the country, forking over checked bag fees for extra credit. Then I sent my mom out on a thrifting mission (she was thrilled) and her crib, which she found for $30 on Facebook Marketplace, lives at her house now. Rinse, repeat. We have a Guava Lotus Travel Crib, and a Baby Bjorn Travel Crib, both of which are easy and good because the mattress directly rests on the floor which means my giant kids don’t exceed the weight limit.
Biggest Regret: STROLLERS
I make up for buyign this new by manically evangelizing the benefits of used strollers to unwilling passersby. When I was pregnant, I went stroller shopping. It seemed important. And when you go stroller shopping, they will tell you that buying a stroller is like buying a car. That you’re designing the next six-to-eight years of your life, and should spare no expense. NO. If you wish, buy new fabric packs. Or take a used Uppababy stroller to one of their stores and have all the fabric replaced and deep-cleaned for ~$200. And then you can use the one thousand dollars you’ve just saved on date nights, which you’ll need after cleaning fruit pulp and body fluids off your stroller the night before.
Never Regret: CLOTHES
Luckily, except for some frivolous early purchases, my thrifting spirit was strong for baby clothes after only a few weeks of giving away new-with-tags onesies that my firstborn grew out of in, literally, days. Also lucky is that my local, San Fernando Valley Rescue Mission Super Thrift, has an amazing children’s section. It is a dreamscape of near-new Patagonia fleece. Recreate this experience online.
Consider this quality of life question: instead of clicking on a screen, wouldn’t you like to meet a neighbor-parent on a corner and skip away with a new acquaintance AND a new-old stroller? Then you spend what you save on something like this grape cutter, which I’ve nicknamed Annie Sullivan, because it is a miracle worker.
Or stay online, and wonder if it’s my high school bully who is shipping you this vintage Limited Too Sweater-Shirt?
