A friend shared this post with me, from a homeschool supply and resources site called Memoria Press.
In our house, this china is all we use on a daily basis, whether the kids are grabbing a plate of leftover mac and cheese late at night or we are sitting down to a fully set table with friends. We did the whole plastic toddler cup thing when the children were very little, but as soon as they could handle proper dishes we let them use the same nice dishes as the adults. Of course, they’ve dropped a few over the years (especially my youngest boy who seems to have some kind of curse), but it’s easy enough to replace individual plates with just a little work on eBay. The loss is small compared to the gain: raising my children in an environment saturated by beauty, loveliness, culture, dignity, and elegance.
This has been a long-term struggle for me, though I’d say about 10 years ago I made a conscious decision not to save things for “special occasions.” In regards to my wardrobe, when I first moved and was working from home full-time, I was still wearing my tailoring around the house (as attested by this Put This On feature from 2018). I still feel reluctance to wear tailored trousers everyday, in part because they wear out faster and require dry cleaning far more frequently when they’re in regular rotation. I’ve since had 2 little boys, have a third baby on the way, and am now back in the office—so things have changed for me, and I will write a post soon talking about dressing up with small kids around. But overall, I wear my nice things as often as I can.
Apply this thinking to watches and you see how widespread it is—“Safe queens” anybody? This is an area where I have never struggled—the watches I own and wear are almost all Omega; I don’t have cheaper Seiko’s or Citizens or whatever for daily wear while letting the nicer ones sit in the watch case. I prefer it that way. Almost every time a watch in that lower price point appeals to me—say, a Seiko Prospex diver—I think to myself: “Yeah but when would I wear this? I have a Planet Ocean I like much more already.”
Back to clothes. In the recent conversation I had with Joshua Davis, there was a story he shared which has spurred me all over again to embrace this way of thinking. (That story is toward the end of the full conversation available for Patreon members). Here’s a photo of me putting my younger son to bed wearing one of my favorite shirts, one from Eidos with its glorious, tall Marcus collar:
There’s also an element of aging to this as well. You realize after a while that the things you bought at one point thinking they’d last “forever” don’t, and if you save them, chances are you’ll just grow out of them and can’t wear them anyway. So may as well enjoy them.
So here’s to wearing your nice clothes. Enjoy them while there is yet enjoyment to be had.
