I have a candle I haven’t lit.
This isn’t because I don’t like it.
Quite the opposite.
It’s a particularly lovely candle. It smells wonderful, came in a beautiful glass jar and was, by my usual candle-buying standards, rather expensive.
Which is precisely why I haven’t used it.
Apparently, at some point I decided that an ordinary Wednesday evening wasn’t important enough for this candle.
So there it sits.
Waiting for best.
I also have clothes that have spent far too much time on hangers because they’re ‘too nice’ for everyday wear, glasses I instinctively avoid because they’re the good ones, and toiletries that have been preserved in the bathroom like museum exhibits.
Perhaps you do too.
Because somewhere along the way, many of us learnt to divide our possessions into two categories.
Everyday things.
And best things.
The trouble is, best doesn’t come round nearly often enough.
Where did ‘saving it for best’ come from?
For many of us, it probably began at home.
There was the best china.
The best towels.
The best tablecloth.
Possibly even a front room that children entered at their peril.
These things weren’t for Tuesday.
They were for Christmas, birthdays, visitors and occasions when somebody important was coming round.
And it made perfect sense.
Previous generations often owned fewer things, and replacing them wasn’t necessarily easy or affordable. Good clothes were expensive. Furniture was expected to last. Wedding china might genuinely be used for the rest of your life.
Looking after things was sensible.
But somehow the habit has lingered even though the world around us has changed.
We still find ourselves saying:
I’ll keep that for a special occasion.
I don’t want to ruin it.
It’s too nice to use every day.
Which sounds perfectly reasonable.
Until you realise you’ve owned the thing for seven years.
The dress waiting for a better life
Clothes are perhaps where we’re worst for this.
Most wardrobes contain something that’s waiting.
A beautiful dress.
A lovely blouse.
Shoes that are apparently too nice to walk on actual pavements.
We buy these things because we love them, then carefully preserve them for the imaginary version of ourselves who receives far more invitations than we do.
Meanwhile, we wear the same five comfortable things repeatedly.
There’s nothing wrong with comfortable clothes.
I’m a great supporter of elasticated waistbands.
But if you own something you genuinely love, why does it need an invitation before it’s allowed out?
Wear the dress to lunch.
Put on the nice earrings to go to the supermarket.
Wear perfume when you’re working from home.
The cashier in Aldi may not appreciate the effort, but that’s hardly the point.
You’re not dressing for them.
Use the good china
Perhaps you inherited a tea set.
Maybe you’ve got beautiful wine glasses hidden at the back of a cupboard.
Or plates that only appear at Christmas because they’re ‘too good’ for beans on toast.
Get them out.
Obviously, if something is extremely valuable, historically important or irreplaceable, you might reasonably want to look after it.
But most of our ‘best’ things aren’t priceless antiques.
They’re just nice things.
And nice things are allowed to be used.
Drink your morning tea from the cup you love.
Put toast on the pretty plate.
Serve fish fingers on the wedding china if that’s what you’re having.
Fine china does not know it’s Wednesday.
Light the candle
Candles are particularly ridiculous things to save.
Their entire purpose is to be slowly destroyed.
That is literally the product.
And yet we’ll buy a lovely one and refuse to light it because we don’t want to ‘waste’ it.
So instead of enjoying ten or twenty hours of beautiful fragrance, we enjoy several years of looking at an unlit candle.
This is not an improvement.
Light it.
Not when guests come.
Tonight.
Make dinner, tidy the kitchen, put your pyjamas on and light the ridiculously nice candle.
Congratulations.
Wednesday has just become the special occasion.
Open the expensive toiletries
You know the ones.
The beautiful bottle of bath oil.
The hand cream somebody gave you for Christmas.
The tiny luxury moisturiser you’ve been rationing as though the manufacturer has ceased trading.
Use them.
Products don’t improve indefinitely in cupboards.
Fragrances fade. Creams expire. Oils change.
And there is something particularly tragic about finally deciding to use your expensive body lotion only to discover it now smells faintly of crayons.
Enjoy it while it’s lovely.
Your elbows are as deserving today as they’ll be on some theoretical special occasion in 2028.
Stop keeping the house for visitors
This habit doesn’t just apply to possessions.
Sometimes we save our homes for best too.
We buy flowers when people are coming round.
We put out the nice hand towels.
We make the table look lovely.
We clean the kitchen as though an environmental health inspector is expected for dinner.
Then everyone leaves and we go back to normal.
Why?
Why shouldn’t you get the flowers?
Why shouldn’t you eat dinner at the table occasionally rather than balancing a plate on your lap?
Why shouldn’t the nice hand wash be there when nobody is visiting?
Visitors aren’t more entitled to enjoy your home than you are.
They don’t even pay the mortgage.
Eat the nice food
There’s an edible version of saving things for best too.
A particularly good bottle of something.
Fancy chocolates.
A jar brought home from holiday.
The cheese that’s ‘for the weekend’.
Sometimes saving food makes sense, of course.
But sometimes we save it so successfully that it expires.
There are few moments more irritating than discovering the lovely thing you were keeping for a special occasion went out of date three months ago.
Eat it.
Share it.
Enjoy it while it’s actually enjoyable.
If you’ve been given beautiful chocolates, don’t keep moving them around the kitchen until they develop a mysterious white coating.
The special occasion is that somebody gave you chocolates.
But what if I ruin it?
This is the real fear, isn’t it?
If we use something, it might get damaged.
The glass might break.
The dress might stain.
The shoes might get scuffed.
The beautiful notebook might acquire handwriting that doesn’t remotely live up to the notebook.
And yes.
That can happen.
Using things changes them.
But perhaps that’s not always the same as ruining them.
A table gathers scratches because people have eaten around it.
Shoes crease because they’ve taken you places.
A favourite mug eventually gets a chip because you’ve made hundreds of cups of tea in it.
Things acquire a history.
There is something rather lovely about that.
The tyranny of the beautiful notebook
I cannot be the only person who has suffered from this.
You buy a gorgeous notebook.
Thick paper.
Beautiful cover.
Possibly one of those little ribbons to mark your page.
You open it.
And suddenly nothing you could possibly write seems important enough.
Shopping list?
Absolutely not.
Phone number?
How dare you.
Random thought about whether you’ve remembered to put the bins out?
This notebook deserves literature.
So you put it away.
Years later, you discover it again.
Still completely blank.
Use the notebook.
Write terrible things in it.
Make lists.
Cross things out.
Draw arrows.
Start on page three if the pristine first page is intimidating.
A notebook filled with ordinary life is infinitely more interesting than a perfect empty one.
Don’t wait until you’ve changed
Sometimes we’re not saving the thing for a better occasion.
We’re saving it for a better version of ourselves.
I’ll wear that when I’ve lost weight.
I’ll use that when we’ve decorated.
We’ll get the nice glasses out when the children are older.
I’ll start that hobby when I have more time.
There will always be another condition we can attach to enjoyment.
Another milestone.
Another Monday.
Another version of ourselves who apparently has everything sorted.
But life is stubbornly happening now.
Not when the kitchen is finished.
Not when you’re a different size.
Not when work calms down.
Now.
Using what you own can actually save money
There’s another benefit to all this.
Using your good things makes you realise how much you already have.
When lovely clothes, toiletries, crockery and candles sit hidden away, it’s surprisingly easy to go shopping for more lovely things.
We keep buying treats while preserving the treats we’ve already bought.
Getting everything into use changes that.
Shop your wardrobe.
Open the beauty products.
Burn the candles.
Use the fancy tea.
Read the books.
You may discover you don’t need anything new for quite some time.
That’s good for the bank balance and considerably more satisfying than owning twelve lovely candles you’re apparently forbidden to light.
Try the ‘use it this week’ rule
If you have things you’ve been saving, try this.
Choose one.
Just one.
And use it this week.
Wear the jacket.
Open the perfume.
Drink from the crystal glass.
Cook the ingredient you’ve been saving.
Start the notebook.
Put the expensive hand cream beside the sink.
Don’t turn it into another self-improvement project.
You don’t need to empty every cupboard and create a spreadsheet entitled Things I Must Now Enjoy.
That somewhat defeats the purpose.
Just bring one nice thing into ordinary life.
Then next week, choose another.
What if something really is special?
Of course, not everything needs to be used every day.
Some possessions are precious precisely because they’re rare, fragile or sentimental.
Your grandmother’s delicate china might not be the ideal vessel for a toddler’s Weetabix.
The expensive dress probably isn’t suitable for gardening.
And I’m not suggesting opening a vintage bottle you’ve been deliberately saving for your daughter’s wedding because some woman on the internet told you Tuesday was special.
There is room for anticipation.
Saving something can be part of the pleasure.
The question is whether you’re choosing to save it for a particular reason, or simply postponing enjoyment through habit.
There’s a difference.
Ordinary days are most of our lives
Perhaps this is the bit that matters.
We tend to imagine life as a collection of big moments.
Weddings.
Birthdays.
Christmases.
Holidays.
Celebrations.
But most of life isn’t like that.
Most of life is making tea.
Going to work.
Putting washing away.
Cooking dinner.
Walking the dog.
Watching television.
Going to bed and doing it all again tomorrow.
Those ordinary days aren’t the bits between real life.
They are real life.
And if we’re always saving the best things for exceptional days, we’re reserving them for a remarkably small percentage of it.
So wear the good jumper.
Put flowers on the table.
Spray the perfume.
Use the beautiful bowl.
Open the chocolates.
Write in the notebook.
And for goodness’ sake, light the candle.
You don’t need to wait for best.
Today will do perfectly well.
Further Reading: Dream Big and Live Fully with a Bucket List
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