This old house is perfect

I’ve long maintained that the outside of my house is none of my business.

When it comes to the interior, my 102-year-old girl is very cute. When it comes to the exterior, her style is best described as “teardowncore.” The only look she’s serving is “haunted.”

My house did recently get a facelift in the form of new windows — she barely looks a day over 80 now — but I will admit I sometimes feel self-conscious about the peeling paint and crumbling stairs and … actually, I don’t have the word count to spare for the list. Especially as fancy-pants new builds pop up around it, replacing houses that looked a lot like mine. It’s hard not to internalize the subtext there.

I can usually counteract this with gratitude. It’s an immense privilege to own a home at all, especially one my husband and I have been able to pay for with words and creativity. It is, and has been, very good to us and I am proud of it.

But all my insecurities were reactivated the other week when I found a door hanger from a development company — which shall remain nameless because, in fairness to them, they were just advertising their business — affixed to the rustiest part of our rusty bannister, offering me the chance to build new on my lot.

I know I shouldn’t take this personally because “everyone got one” — allegedly! — and it was probably on the bannister because the person delivering them realized that if they’d hung it on the door as designed, the door might fall off entirely.

Still, it flew straight up my nose. “How dare you! Didn’t you see the new windows?” I posted about it in my neighbourhood Facebook group, and others had the same reaction.

The whole thing got me thinking about how much our current culture is obsessed with constantly upgrading. We’re constantly bombarded with the messaging that newer is better, bigger is better, more is better.

A lot of this is driven by the fact things are just not made the way they used to be. Appliances you used to be able to get 20, 25 years out of fail before a decade is up; planned obsolescence — whereby something is designed to have a limited life span so you have to replace it — is rampant in tech. Don’t even get me started on clothing.

But a lot of it is also driven by social media and, more specifically, social media comparison. Lifestyle creep is promoted in every form of content.

There are the more obvious unboxing, haul and Show Your Collection videos, in which people mostly show off consumer goods, but products — particularly skin care and supplements and higher-tech hair tools — are the true focal points of Get Ready With Me or My 5-to-9 Before My 9-to-5 videos.

So, too, are beautifully appointed, well-curated interiors. Owing, no doubt, to the rise of HGTV and home renovation shows, there is a whole Instagram cottage industry dedicated to design and decor, with tastes and trends now moving as quickly as those more commonly associated with fashion. Fast homeware is competing with fast fashion for top dog in the landfill.

To wit: a lot of the interior renovations we made to our house in 2016 are probably “out” to these people, and listen: I have millennial grey in my house because I am a millennial. Sue me.

All of this just leads to dissatisfaction and consumer debt. Do you really need the latest version of the thing you already have? Do you really need to renovate your entire house/face/life or is your screen time just in the double digits?

Don’t get me wrong: I have obviously upgraded some of my things over time, sometimes because I’ve had to and other time because I’ve just wanted to. But I resent being made to feel like I have to upgrade something that still works perfectly fine — like a whole entire house! — just because it’s “old.”

I mean, have some respect! How many of these new builds are going to live to be 102?

winnipegfreepress.com/jenzoratti