No. 15: The case for using your fancy stuff

If we don't use them are we deeming ourselves not worthy of them?

Drinking Coca Cola in a champagne flute. Using your most expensive dessert plate for your afternoon snack. Linen napkins for your TV dinner. Tailored trousers to go get more cat food. Throwing on the heels you never wear to dress up for dinner at a friend’s.

What does using our “nice” things signal to us? How does it make us feel? What does it mean when we only reserve the nice things for special occasions? Does it take away from “special” to use those beautiful things?

When this viral tweet made its way to me last week, I felt subtly floored. A few weeks ago I had been having a similar conversation on my tiktok about “using your fancy stuff.” This tweet by Selena here points to something deeper when we don’t use our “best, good, fancy” clothes.

If we don’t use them, are we deeming ourselves unworthy of them?

This using our “best things” hit me really strongly three weeks ago when I was doing research for a video on flatware and revisited a wire cutter recommendation. I was looking specifically at flatware because I have shared my holy grail flatware brand in a few videos on my tiktok. But something really stood out to me.

The same brand that is my holy grail, the New York Times said “Some testers felt this set was a bit too nice for use everyday.”

Huh?! My recommendation is too nice? Really?

For me wearing my nice clothes everyday has at times in my life felt like a chore, but when it came to flatware and home goods wouldn’t you want to use your nice stuff everyday?

But then I thought that perhaps it’s all subjective, for some people flatware was their version of “nice clothes.”

So I asked and the response was interesting.

One person shared “I have bought beautiful things at auction my entire life. It crushes me when I get something stored carefully since 1955, awaiting its chance to be used. Then the owners died & I bought it for $20.”

Another shared “I always think about how Joan Didion said she uses her good china everyday ‘because everyday is all there is.’”

And the most interesting was in response to someone commenting that something could feel fancy but in an “uncomfortable way” and another person shared that the flatware looked like “they belong on a nice linen table cloth with flower centerpieces and candles. I don’t have energy for that everyday and they would seem out of place on my normal table.”

There is so much to unpack.

For some, the idea of not using your formal or fancy home pieces feels like a lost, a loss of time and love and joy. For others formal is a reminder of a different vision of their everyday that exerts pressure and uncomfortable feelings - it might make them feel the opposite end of the spectrum- bad.

Let’s remember Evelyn’s quote at the end of her tweet of “you save them for later. You save them for a version of you that you deem worthy of using things.”

I wanted Joan Didion to have the last word on this entire page because it’s the core truth of why we need to use our nice and fancy and good things, but she needs to set us up with the first word: “Every day is all there is.”

And I would add secondly, that practical is subjective. And thirdly, that I would rather savor it than save it.

Some say that having sterling silver flatware isn’t practical in their everyday but for another person having to hand wash and take care of delicate flatware is worth it to them. For some, the idea of having to take care to wash a cashmere or wool sweater after a few uses isn’t practical so they will chose to throw on the old college hoodie. For some the cashmere and wool are pieces that they purchased and they mean to get all the use possible out of them. For others, the idea of using the expensive perfume just to be at home is a waste because it’s not a special occasion and it could be seen as impractical or a waste of money to use it that day.

But using our nice, fancy, best has to be deeper. This is not just about cost-per-wear or cost-per-use, something else is happening. For example, in 2012 researchers at Northwestern University coined the concept of “Enclothed Cognition,” that what we wear can have an impact on alertness and productivity. When participants put on a fancy lab coat, they actually performed better! The authors point that clothing has symbolic meaning.

If clothes have symbolic meaning, then perhaps also the kind of glasses we use, the knives we cut with, the scarf we wear does the same.

I’m not wearing a lab coat like the others in this study, but I’d like to share my experience with using the fancy stuff as my own personal evidence.

Objectively, my current lifestyle would lend itself to an extremely casual wardrobe.

I live in the middle of nowhere. No really, I live on an unpaved road surrounded by mountains. I have a mother and baby deer that hang out in my yard everyday. I’m looking out my window at one of the groundhogs on our property that is posing like “one of your French girls” on a warm rock after an afternoon of nibbling.

I travel for work and get opportunities to dress up, but most of my life right now is the grocery store run 20 minutes away, a target run 1 hour away, a coffee shop 30 minutes away, and extremely casual restaurants in our surrounding Catskills towns. I live in a house with a dog and a husband who has shattered many a beautiful wine glass while washing up dishes. Dressing up is not on the list of practical things for living in a rural area.

When we first came up here full time, we moved from London after living in New York for about 10 years, we fully unmasked. I escaped to the mountains to continue to process burnout and depression, and find a tunnel out of it. I found that the isolation of being in nature both comforting, but also a never ending tunnel that I had to find a way to pull myself back into myself and also back into the world with people - something I craved deeply.

As Evelyn points out, “a subtle sign of not being in a good place” is not using your best. In the hardest part of my burnout which coincided with many lockdowns in London, I spent many a day in stained t-shirts and a very specific pair of Mark’s & Spencers sweatpants that traveled with me here to the Catskills. I would choose this outfit because I felt like I had no where to go to wear the other clothes. But I left all of my nice things unused in London and the first part of our time here in the Mountains. For example, I wouldn’t use any of the Korean face masks I had in my bathroom because I only had a few and I wanted to use them at the “right time.” I left our good knives unpacked in storage for a long time. I didn’t unpack my dressier clothes. I kept our Japanese ceramics on the top shelf. It was all just waiting.

It felt like those things were for a different person and just like the comment before I felt like I didn’t have energy for it. Perhaps Evelyn is right, that I didn’t feel worthy of the version of me that used those. She felt like a distant projection or mirage.

As I crawled out of burnout, I craved the feeling of being excited with the world and started small. I started using the things that had been staring back at me lonely, waiting for the time I would feel good enough or special enough to use it.

I started with those Korean face masks, telling myself that even if the benefits of that mask weren’t seen - I would see them. I threw out those awful blue Mark’s & Spencer’s sweatpants in a ritualistic moment where I put took sage to my trashcan to take away any time of energy it held. I didn’t want the energy they held going near another person.

I would take out the handwashing only bowls I had bought special in Japan to eat my hyper fixation meal of the week (some version of pasta). I started putting on the makeup that had been sitting unused - beautiful Kohl eyeliners from Victoria Beckham that I had lusted after, my Dior blush that I love, and my hard to get Opera lip stains - even if I was just going to be inside.

Little by little it started to snow ball - in a good way. It was subtle but using my nice products encouraged me to get out more, it made me feel pretty when I caught a look at myself in the mirror, it made the food I ate feel like a special gift. It felt indulgent, but also nice! That snowball grew and I made changes in my job, started reading fiction again, and loving the act of getting dressed everyday even if no one would see it.

Today, I put on my gorgeous max mara coat I got at an outlet in Italy just to go to the grocery store over my very well loved north face puffer which sees most airtime during the week. I choose to wear tailored trousers even when I spend my day on zoom. Sure, it might be impractical - some pieces need special care to clean, and I could definitely be seen as overdressing - but really this is about me telling myself that I am special. I am worthy of truly little everyday luxuries and the feeling I get using those things that are special to me.

Just like how I know that my subtle sign of not being in a good place is when I stop reading fiction, when I start saving the nice, best, good products, clothes, things - for another version of myself - the light should go off to let me know that I need to take a breath.

That response to my video did break my heart a bit. The idea that the flatware I love everyday that someone envisioned on a “linen table cloth with flower centerpieces,” felt distant to her energy and everyday. I want their life to feel like she can live with a beautiful linen table cloth and flower center pieces.

Someone might argue that it’s good to leave room for extra special things, but I would argue that it is easier to get so caught up in articulating what constitutes a “special moment” that you end up missing the beauty of and specialness of every day.

Daily joy is essential and creating that oozy indulgent feeling of special doesn’t have to come from expensive things. In one of my previous lives, I studied Feng Shui for a year with a master because I am fascinated by the connection of our mental health and the spaces we inhabit. Clutter can lead to stagnant energy in our homes and also reflect that stagnation in our life. In working with clients I was always so fascinated by the impact a client would experience when they put fresh flowers in their homes in the most social room in a home or apartment. They would talk about how good it made them feel, how happy it was to walk past it, how they never thought it would make such a big impact. It breathes life. Most of the time, flowers are for the “special occasion” like recitals, valentines day, graduations, etc. It is seen as a frivolous indulgence and fancy. But in Feng Shui, fresh plants add energy and especially flowers in the right color pallet add fire energy to boost your room. My teacher would talk about how for some people it shouldn’t be an indulgence, but really it’s an investment in wellbeing. Those flowers can shift people’s mood in their home for the entire week. It became a staple of daily joy.

We deserve daily joy and I bet there are some things in your closet or your cupboards that could bring you daily joy. You are worthy of joy. Worthy of fancy salt, your best ceramics, that face serum you got as a present, those pants you only wear to ‘nice’ places. Saving things for later for that special moment, perfect time, is a fallacy. As our best friend Joan says “everyday is all there is.”

xx Bailey