As I got older, I began to see consumer products as portals to a world I can describe only as cozy. By cozy, I mean products that give me functionality, tactile pleasure, familiarity, reliability, and control. I increasingly prefer them to products that may be more spectacular and alluring but are prone to falter or persist in feeling alien.
In the living room, I have a $1,500 4K LG television. Despite its spectacular picture and rich sound, I despise using it. The interface is schizophrenic. One second I’m scrolling through tiles; the next, the television inexplicably switches to an annoying “magic pointer.” It’s not magic. It’s crappy. No one asked for it. It shows up like a smelly uncle at your doorstep. It adds nothing but confusion. The interface also jumps rows without prompting and sometimes kicks me out of the home screen altogether. The LG is decidedly not cozy. It’s so aggravating that I’m buying a Roku device simply to override the interface.
Speaking of Roku, I own a budget $200 Roku TV in the bedroom. Its picture can’t compete with the LG’s, but using it is effortless. It is direct, simple, and reliable. It does what I ask it to do and then leaves me alone. That is cozy.
For radios, I use the Tecsun PL-660 in the kitchen because I can play it while it’s plugged into the wall without electrical interference. When my hands are wet from washing dishes, I don’t want to disconnect and reconnect a power cord every time I turn on the radio. For a while, I used the richer-sounding Tecsun PL-880 and PL-990. Their speakers were superior, but using them wasn’t cozy. I was constantly worried about getting the USB plug wet and shorting the radio. Worry is the enemy of cozy. So I returned to the thinner-sounding PL-660. On balance, its dependable performance makes it the cozy choice.
For shopping, I prefer Trader Joe’s. It is small. Walking from one end to the other isn’t an expedition; it feels like walking from my kitchen to my bedroom. I know the employees. When I’m finished shopping, I walk to the checkout aisle and interact with an actual human being. That is cozy.
What isn’t cozy is walking into a giant chain supermarket or, worse, Costco, where the building is the size of a football stadium and almost as loud. Often there is no human to check you out. Instead, a scanner admonishes you for failing to place your groceries in the designated area. Sometimes six-foot beeping robots cruise the aisles scanning shelves and managing inventory. This isn’t cozy. It is literally alienating.
I would never buy a refrigerator with a built-in ice maker because those things are notorious sources of breakdowns and headaches. There is nothing cozy about wondering which complicated mechanism inside your refrigerator will fail next. Give me the basic Whirlpool top-freezer refrigerator recommended by an appliance mechanic. In many cases, the more basic the machine, the cozier it becomes.
I could continue through the entire house and garage: cars, watches, computers, fans, vacuum cleaners, toaster ovens, microwaves, tabletop ice makers, electric toothbrushes, double-edged razors. Again and again, I choose reliability over flash. Predictable functionality creates a cozy feeling that expensive, nerve-wracking gadgets often destroy with their hiccups, fussy fits, unnecessary features, and breakdowns.
As I consider this obsession with coziness, however, I have to remind myself that life’s default setting is the opposite of cozy. Life is uncertainty and conflict. The cozy environments I construct with consumer products are, at best, small consolations against a world that can overwhelm me with its unpredictability. Coziness is the exception, not the rule.
Sociologist Anthony Giddens would give my quest another name: ontological security, a fundamental sense of continuity, order, and trust in one’s world. Familiar routines and dependable objects help sustain that feeling. My cozy products create miniature islands of ontological security within a life whose default condition remains uncertainty and conflict.
Let me be clear, however. I am not a Cozy Purist. I know this because perhaps the coziest appliance ever made is one I no longer use: the vintage swan-neck coffee percolator. You can still find them on eBay. The old models with American-made heating elements seem capable of surviving several human generations. Perhaps the most beloved is the GE Immersible, though Farberware, Universal, and Sunbeam made wonderful ones as well. Few appliances are cozier. A percolator makes a soft, rhythmic burbling as heated water rises through the stem and splashes against the glass dome. The sound is mechanical but gentle, as reassuring as rain tapping against a window.
I enjoyed the percolator’s cozy ritual for several years until I committed the fatal mistake of conducting a taste test. I compared percolated coffee with slow-drip coffee. The slow-drip coffee was far better: richer, more complex, less bitter. It wasn’t close.
So now I use a modern slow-drip coffee maker. It may last six years. It may last six months. In that respect, it isn’t cozy at all. But the coffee tastes better. I may be a creature who craves cozy comforts, but I have my limits.
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