Adult-proof your home

How do you know when you’ve grown up? Can you gauge by easy cut-and-dry signs like receding hairlines and crow’s feet? Does it happen when you have a kid? What about when you catch yourself saying things like, “Oh – can I call you back? You caught me in the middle of my anxiety breathing exercises.” (Guilty.)

I think it’s pretty much a universal fear for those of us whose days in college are numbered.

Does graduating mean we’re adults? If so, does being an adult necessarily mean being boring and married (then, some time later, divorced)? It can really stress you out if you let it.

I’ve come to think that there’s an easy way to tell. There are things adults own whose function is completely and utterly lost on me as a young person. I really believe that walking around someone’s house and taking note of what they own – what they choose to spend their money on – says a lot about whether they are a “grown-up” or just have gray hair.

Cutlery trays for kitchen drawers are an extremely “adult” thing to own, for example. They aren’t necessary but succeed in making one seem orderly and in control. My own silverware has run wild and free, tempest-tossed across the vast expanse of its kitchen drawer for upwards of three years now.

And you know what? It’s not been too difficult to find what I need in there. Turns out knives, forks and spoons actually look and feel quite different.

Throw pillows can be dangerous harbingers of adulthood as well. Though they can be used for good rather than evil, I’ve seen too many adult homes featuring a throw pillow or two tossed on a chair, the only action it ever sees being when it is moved to a different location if someone wishes to sit down.

Other notable “adult” giveaways include the ownership of multiple variations of the same thing (both paper napkins and paper towels, myriad versions of a simple broom for every surface imaginable), anything with the suffix “cozy” attached to it, lawn ornaments that aren’t ironic, sprinkler systems, monogrammed linens, paved driveways and mulch (last I checked, dirt came free).

I can’t help thinking the more “nice,” “proper” things that fill your home, the less you own the things and the more they own you. This buying-in reeks of adulthood. We avoid it in college; our financial concerns don’t extend beyond rent, textbooks and whether we can afford a $5 sandwich. But after graduation we have choices to make.

A friend of mine recently said that when she gets married she plans to ask for money to travel rather than traditional gifts. I called her a genius and then took a good look at myself. Why had I assumed blenders and salad-bowl sets were the only wedding gifts that existed?

Maybe one way to avoid typical American adulthood is to spend the money we make on things we need or that make us happy, not things that make us trapped.  
Or at least use your throw pillows if you’re going to have them, for Christ’s sake.