The fancy furniture curse
This is the problem: you finally get that chair or that table, the one you had been coveting for years, the one that you know has the lore and the aura and the craftsmanship and so forth. You buy it like you buy anything at any store, but you know you’re buying this for life, that you probably need to rewrite your will to account for it. It arrives. And then the rest of your home looks like crap.
This is the fancy furniture curse. If you put something in the space that vastly outplays the rest, oh friends it will be noticed. Imagine pairing an Eames lounge against all-Ikea-everything. Something made of real wood, real material. The eye instantly snaps to it. You realize the lighting is off. How do you improve your space’s lighting? There are no guides. Sconces? Pendants? You rent, yo.
And now you must replace everything else. Nothing is worthy. You’re a snake shedding their skin on a generational scale, the horizon measurable in decades. The climate impact of the fancy furniture curse is nigh-immeasurable. Effectively all furniture is unsustainable, unless you’re buying it used, which doesn’t happen as much as anyone wants to admit. And now you need everything. Everything. Your place may as well be empty. You realize your stationery is bad now. Your housewares are from college. You have a pantry that is not decanted. All of this is irredeemable. How did you live before this?
Oh, you could, of course, continue living like a normal person who just happens to have a fancy chair. But then everyone will comment on the chair. No matter how favorable the comment happens to be, the implication is always: why does a person like you own a thing like that? And, you know, it’s a good question, because you decide to cause an aberration in the fabric of the universe on purpose.
You have three choices now: sell the fancy thing, do nothing, or complete your upgrade. We have discussed the perils of doing nothing. Selling the fancy thing is unthinkable: it is, after all, a grail piece, something you worked hard to acquire, something you got genuinely and on your own terms. One path remains.