When we first moved into our house, N was very stressed out by the move and the idea of buying a house in general. I went out and bought two toilet paper stands like this one:
I was so happy, clutching the toilet paper stands to myself that N’s stress immediately lifted. The toilet paper stands were the height of luxury to me. I came from a place where not only didn’t they exist but the idea of having a reliable supply of toilet paper to put into them was exotic.
“It’s a pity,” N said, “that one day you’ll get used to having these toilet paper stands and they’ll no longer give you so much joy.”
But that didn’t happen. I still feel profound contentment every time I add toilet paper rolls to the stands. A peaceful feeling of completion comes over me.
Clarissa's Blog 
I also experience exactly this kind of contentment when doing fairly mundane things, for the same reasons as you. But I have a question: is childhood deprivation of these things the only way to get to such an emotional space? That is, what will it take for my American-born daughter to have the same sense in adulthood if all these ways of living were a default for her in childhood?
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According to Freud, being able to derive pleasure from mundane tasks of daily life is the marker (not a but the) of a healthy psyche. Tons of people from my culture bitch incessantly. Deprivation itself doesn’t produce this outcome.
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I think there’s something to it, though. The grew-up-deprived side of my family produced amazingly resilient people who endured some horrific things (poverty, WWII, early widowhood, deaths of children, the works) and… were still baseline cheerful, good, hardworking, and did not complain. The more affluent side… not so much.
It’s fascinating to watch how that’s played out in the last couple generations. came-from-dirt-farmers side are the only ones passing on their family name. To a man (and woman) they all took great pride in having a house, making it look nice, mowing the yard, and planting pretty things– you could almost tell someone was related to us just by cataloguing the flowers around their houses; they shared around cuttings and bulbs until they all had the same varieties of camellia (something a great-granduncle had bred), althea, fig, amaryllis, kalanchoe, blood lily, gloriosa, etc. They had grown up gardening for food to survive. Most of them dropped that as soon as they didn’t have to anymore, but they were all fairly obsessed with gardening: flowers made it a middle-class hobby. Their great-grandkids are mostly doing well– family produced a lot of successful contractors.
Other side: the number-per-generation has been shrinking rapidly. I’m the only one in my generation on that side who has stayed married and had more than two children (or even reasonably healthy children). Odds of any of those few children successfully forming families is… not looking good. Majority seem to be dealing with some kind of prenatal substance exposure. “syndrome-y” as they say. They’re young yet, so… here’s hoping things get better for them? But my generation… mostly stuck in low-pay jobs with no longterm prospects.
If you sorted those two groups out by IQ, almost certainly the came-from-money side would rank higher. It’s been pretty worthless to them. Grit and cheerfulness apparently gets you a lot further.
-ethyl
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My Ukrainian grandparents raised 6 children. Out of them, two had one child each and the rest had two children each. Out of these children, three (the male ones) are childless. The rest have one or two children.
We are talking a different continent, a different reality, and pretty similar results to what you are describing.
My grandfather was so sad that he only had girls and wasn’t going to be able to pass down the family name. I’d so love it if he could meet my daughter who carries his last name. Of course, she looks nothing like any of us because she takes after the Russian side of her family but the name is there.
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The saddest case of the childless male cousins is the one who spent his whole life wanting to have kids. He was telling us his goal in life was to have kids since he was in first grade. And then consistently, throughout life, he kept repeating that he wants kids. But sadly, he never met a woman interested in kids. He had 3 major relationships in his life, the last one culminating in marriage to a woman from a culture where very large families and the norm. But it turned out she wants to be a puppy mommy instead.
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Oh, no!
That’s terribly sad.
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You sound like my wife who just came home from Global yesterday with her favorite coconut broom.
Walnut
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That store is a temple of unadulterated joy.
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LOL, you really are nuts, but then so is my wife. It’s actually kind of a dump but I guess its better than Jays on Grand. Now if you head down the street to Andy’s then were talking some joy.
Walnut
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