When you are an advertiser’s dream
Keeping things simple to avoid debt slippery slope
Sometimes, for fun, I read advertising pamphlets instead of the news.
There is nothing nicer than browsing nice-to-haves over tea, and smirking at the gullibility of consumers – a class to which I grudgingly belong, but only just.
The reason I keep an eye on marketing material is because I’m aware of how quickly it insinuates itself into the left-hand side of one’s brain, making its own decisions about what you think you need, versus what you actually do.
We are aspirational organisms, pulled into the economy by easy-to-open accounts with not-so-easy-to-pay instalments.
Throw in rising living costs and planned obsolescence – the artificial limiting of a product’s functionality, usefulness or desirability – and many of us are barely two steps shy of the slippery debt slope.
Several years ago, I wrote about how tempting it was to buy new things when moving house, for example. The issue was not that we shouldn’t have stuff but how much more stuff we end up with – or covet – than is humanly sound.
At moving time, the hub and I identified key things that we needed, owing to wholesale damage of our stuff, which had been in storage.
But, it was alarming to note how persuasively I argued myself into dreaming about purchasing a tangerine Persian rug and a dozen other bits and bobs for a non-existent “snug” space next to the stairs.
None of this would have happened if we hadn’t started buying and borrowing home and lifestyle magazines – initially, just for fun. Between us, we’d dog-eared at least 60 pages and lost the plot entirely.
It’s as though we couldn’t imagine simplicity in the face of mix-and-match heaven, where a pure linen throw in lime is all that works with the neutral corner sofa which we can’t afford to buy, anyway.
My parents have had the same sofa and chairs since 1972.
It’s gold and very traditional, but has weathered a hundred little feet and been the horse to countless children’s rides on its faded, sturdy arms.
One day, when there are no more cats, my mom says, they’ll have it recovered. But for now, it does the job.
And that’s the difference between then and now. We don’t just buy things to “do the job”. We buy a lifestyle image to “have the look”.