B-Side

The Expiration Date

Not Everything That’s Old Is Done.

I’ve been sitting in the same chair for twenty-six years.

It’s a Herman Miller Aeron. I bought it at Costco sometime around 2000, back when I was just starting out in design and had no business spending $350 on a chair. But I did. Because I knew I’d be sitting in it for hours every day, and I figured if the tool was good, the work would follow.

Twenty-six years later, I’m still in it. Same frame. Same mesh. Same base. The only thing I’ve had to replace was the lumbar support — a small plastic piece that slides onto the back of the chair. I looked it up on eBay, found the exact part, slid it in, and it was like new again. Total cost of maintenance over a quarter century: about fifteen dollars.

I’ve spent a quarter of my life in this chair. It’s held me through every client project, every late night, every version of whatever I was building at the time. And it’s not done. Not even close.

Future-Proofing

After the lumbar piece, I started thinking differently. Not about what’s broken — about what might break eventually. So I went online and ordered spare parts. Extra casters for the base. An extra tilt mechanism. Things I don’t need yet but might need in ten years.

Not because Herman Miller is going anywhere — they’ve been around since 1905. But because I’ve learned that the hardest part of keeping something alive isn’t the maintenance. It’s finding the parts when the world has moved on to the next version.

I do this with everything I own now. If I love something and it’s built well, I protect its future. I stock what I might need before I need it. It’s not hoarding — it’s stewardship. It’s saying, “This thing has earned its place in my life, and I’m going to make sure it stays.”

The Disposable Default

We live in a culture that treats everything like it has an expiration date. Not just food — everything. Clothes from last season get donated not because they’re worn out, but because they were seen. Furniture gets replaced not because it broke, but because the trend changed. Phones get upgraded every two years not because they stopped working, but because a new one came out.

The default has become disposal. Something shows a little age, a little wear, a little evidence that it’s been used — and the instinct is to replace it. As if newness is the same as quality. As if longevity is a flaw instead of a feature.

But I look around my house and I see things that are twenty, twenty-five years old. Furniture that people compliment because it looks amazing — not because it’s new, but because it’s been cared for. Clothes that fit better now than they did the first year because the fabric softened into something the factory couldn’t have produced. Tools that work better with age because the handles are worn to the shape of my hand.

These things didn’t expire. They matured. And the only reason they’re still here is that I decided they were worth maintaining instead of replacing.

The Cost of Cheap

There’s a hidden cost to the disposable cycle. You buy something cheap, it breaks in a year, you buy it again. Over ten years, you’ve spent more than you would have on the quality version — and you have nothing to show for it. No history. No patina. No story. Just a series of replacements that never had time to become anything.

The Aeron chair cost me $350 in 2000. If I’d bought a cheap office chair instead, I would’ve replaced it four or five times by now. I’d have spent more money, sat in worse chairs, and never developed the relationship with a single one of them.

Quality isn’t expensive. Replacement is expensive. And the math always favors the thing that lasts — if you’re willing to take care of it.

Check Before You Toss

I think we’ve been trained to look at the date instead of the thing. To trust the label instead of our own judgment. If it’s old, it must be done. If it shows wear, it must be finished.

But most of the time, it’s not. Most of the time, it just needs a fifteen-dollar part from eBay. Or a polish. Or a stitch. Or someone to decide that it’s worth one more year.

Not everything that’s old is done. Some things are just getting started.

Follow the remix on IG @remixology