Cooper City Antique Mall Unveils "Our Answer to The Disposable Society We Live In"

Jan. 24, 2011 - PRLog -- On January 29th at we will Unveil "Our Answer to The Disposable Society We Live In". Having  realized that today people seem to be obsessed with “new things”. Anything that gets a little old is replaced. Electronic's are obsolete before they get home. Clothing stores knowingly sell  poorly constructed garments designed to fall apart. Homes are decorated with pressed wood furniture that will never increase in value and are held together with glue and sawdust that likely will lead to cancer. Quality, longevity, and beauty seem to have been sacrificed for the sake of price, convenience, and laziness. The need for immediate gratification for the latest and greatest  has created a world of overflowing landfills where relatively cheap items have been tossed away to sit in graves of pollution and degradation like yesterdays news. Perfectly good equipment like radio’s and sofa’s needing only to be cleaned or repaired are tossed away to sit and rot at varying speeds never decomposing completely.  To save our planet we must stop this lifestyle of waste we've been living for the last half century or so. We must begin to think and purchase for the long term. The first thing we need to do is simple, mend and fix things. It may seem radical, why glue the chipped tchatchke back together, or mend a cushion on the sofa instead of get a new one for less? Just taking the time to simply fix things to keep them useful and function may seem crazy to some people but think of  our ancestors from Europe for instance. After “The Occupation” and  year's of rationing by mending and fixing things so nothing had to be produced nor replaced. Their ability to care for things and fix things appears to have been destroyed by 2 generations of lazy, pampered people who have no problem throwing away culture.  For centuries we cared for things so they could be passed on. Furniture and clothes were made to be beautiful as well as functional and to last so they could be handed down. The simple goal of fixing things was not only to save money but to ensure that what is not needed, is not produced, and most of all it taught us to respect things that belong to us.
   Today we live in what I call  “The Disposable Society”  or “The Ikea Age” which also could be called” Post Modern Minimalism”, the thought of beauty in furniture goods has been thrown away.  This Disposable Society seems to  keep prices down, sales up, and  has created a world with furniture that is not worth the sawdust it is made of. New “quality” mass produced furniture is dull unadorned with “clean lines”.  Ironically these clean lines are machine made so less labor, less jobs, and increased destruction of our natural resources.
   Instead of purchasing new furniture we should consider buy old quality furniture. The wonderful thing about purchasing antiques and collectibles is that you can have furniture that is unique.  Most modern furniture is merely attempts at imitating styles of yesterday.  If your tastes are “Modern Furniture” you may find you like Art Deco, or 1950’s Post Modern Furniture.  If it is a more classic look that moves you probably  you may discover you like Edwardian, Victorian, or Georgian styles.  If you happen to have more eccentric tastes the Arts and Crafts movement will definitely move you.  Personally, I like antiques from all periods.  Choosing  antiques is making a choice to purchase not only pieces of history  but generally more elegant and unique furniture that is a far better investment for the future.  
   Besides the aforementioned issues those of us who purchase antiques have a better grasp of not only our history but also of our cultural backgrounds.  What will all the mass produced products tell about us in the future?  Does this all mean that all antiques have been designed in good taste, honestly, no .To me there have been some pretty awful over the top periods.  
  Now, I know what you are thinking we can't buy everything antique.  Some things are far too expensive to purchase. When this arises, the answer is … NOT  Ikea. The answer is to either find a local craftsman or retailer who carries new or even used quality furniture.  Find craftsman or stores whose work you admire and hire them.  There are carpenters, stone masons, blacksmiths, and potters all around us and if you look for them you will find them.
 Hiring local craftsman not only assures your getting unique pieces for your home but more importantly contributes to the local economy, and allows you to know who is responsible for the work. Additionally, hiring local and using quality materials will ensure a longer shelf life that may give you some type of heirloom. Someone question if  hiring local craftsman is more expensive? Not necessarily. If you start with a budget, are clear on what  you envision.  You will likely get quality work, using quality materials,you will support a local craftsman, and you will have something that will hold a memory, and you will leave an heirloom not, add more to our overburdened landfills Besides if we don’t use our local craftsman which is what built this country, we will put them out of business as we see daily on the news. We will live with junk, we will lose our culture as American’s and the link to the past.  The other question I ponder is… Is it really less expensive to purchase mass produced products that literally are designed to only hold up for a couple of year’s. If we put all the craftsman and antique stores out of business will we lose our culture, our link to the past.
    For our project we used our own in house talent. Under creative direction of our own Kevin Alden Reed an Interior Decorator and two of our other dealers "Joey our Carpenter/Handyman" and Sharon Hershkowitz an amazing Mosaic Artist. We set out to design a kitchen that would be unmatched in design and function. Our answer to global warming is to stop the throw away culture of disposable mass production. If we do this we can cut down on needless waste, and the destruction of generations old skills. Cooper City Antique Mall’s answer to the disposable society began when we realized that we are the Mecca for change.  
    We set out to show we can remodel a kitchen using quality, sturdy antiques from our own store and get a designer look while keeping a budget.  Our starting point for our  kitchen was with a used "Heartland" double oven and stove that owner Claudia Cayne purchased a few years back from a deconstruction.  The rest of the items are from our store, Habitat Restore, or leftovers from a home construction project. Using the incredible design and merchandising talent of our own Interior Decorator Kevin Alden Reed  and the challenge to prove that we could design a full kitchen that does not require us to purchase more than 10% new materials and everything else had to be part of the R's Rescue-Repair-Reuse-Repurpose-Recycle-Reuse-Reduce-Repair-Re-Invent.

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Cooper City Antique Mall is a multi-dealer antique store that believes in practicing all the R's- Rescue-Repair Reuse-Repurpose Recycle Reuse Reduce Repair Re-Invent. Additionally we also have Artists in Residence specializing in Repurposed Art.