14 May The Happiness of More
The doors arrived on a Tuesday, and by that afternoon the whole house felt different.
The old doors throughout our house had been scuffed and chipped, dragging slightly along the floor in places.
The new ones went in all at once. Bright white. Clean. Fresh and perfect. I loved them.
The installer held up one of our old handles against the new doors. He said they were in great shape and that we could put the handles right back on. I leaned in to look at it and had an immediate reaction. Yuck. I had never noticed before how dingy the finish was. How outdated the shape was. These ugly things could not go on my beautiful doors. Straight to the trash.
I chose new handles that were sleek and modern. When the project was finished, I went room to room, opening each door, listening to the satisfying click as they closed.
I opened Ella’s closet and frowned. The shelves looked cluttered. The layout suddenly felt awkward and unfinished against these beautiful new doors. I closed it and walked to Emma’s. Same thing.
I pulled out my phone and called a closet company to make an appointment.
It felt like a very wise idea.
And then I realized it. I was falling victim to the Diderot Effect.
When you buy one beautiful thing, everything around it begins to fall short. What used to be good enough becomes something to replace. You start looking more closely, noticing flaws you never saw before, until your sense of enough shifts.
There’s a story behind the name. Denis Diderot, an 18th-century French philosopher known for co-creating the Encyclopédie, once received a scarlet dressing gown as a gift. It was soft and striking and made him feel like a king. He wore it everywhere. He walked around his home, admiring it, until he began to notice that everything else looked terrible by comparison. The rug looked tired. The shelves sagged. The whole room, really, looked like a dump. He couldn’t stand it. Not while wearing such a beautiful gown. So he started replacing things. A new desk. New chairs. Art for the walls. More and more, until everything around him had to rise to meet it. Later, he realized that what he owned had begun to own him.
Life has a way of filling with more in small, reactive steps. One purchase sets a new reference point, and everything nearby gets evaluated against it. The research is clear. There is a negative relationship between how much we chase possessions and our overall sense of contentment. The more we orient toward getting more things, the less fulfilled we tend to feel. Even though our minds keep offering suggestions about what will make us happier next, they often lead us away from what actually makes life feel rich.
While possessions often narrow our attention toward what is still lacking, experiences tend to widen it. They give us anticipation before they happen, presence while we’re in them, and memories we return to long after. They offer more lasting joy than any perfectly organized closet.
I knew what I needed to do. I called and canceled the closet appointment.
I’m hoping these new doors become a doorway to something else.
Not another project waiting inside the house, but an opening into a life rich with experiences.