Lesson #5: Simplicity Over Functionality

I know it has been a while since my last post, but it seems Jen has been pretty careful lately to avoid bloggable events. This past weekend we both went to separate destinations, Jen went with Erika to ACU Homecoming and i went to the family ranch to go hunting. Due to Jen's accommodations and her expectation of the weather being cooler, Jen decided to take the sleeping bag that i had bought for her two years ago. Well after our weekends away, in sharing our experiences, Jen mentioned that her sleeping bag was warm enough it could work in sub-zero environments. Now when i bought her this sleeping bag, i knew that if we went camping it would most likely be in Texas and more likely during warmer times of the year. So i bought this specific bag with the warmer weather in mind. You see this bag is made to keep you warm when the whether is in the 40s, but also has built in zippers that open up mesh panels on the sides of the bag if the weather is warmer. This functionality was fully explained when i gave Jen the sleeping bag, but in her warm uncomfortable sleeping this weekend, was never used.

Now i don't know if it is gender specific, but when i make a purchase I typically buy the more functional of products and in the life time of using those products will use the functionality. Jen however is simplistic, a fact that was further reinforced when after three months of living together, Jen still had yet to learn to use my TIVO. It is an older model, so it only records one show at a time, but while it is recording, you can still watch previously recorded shows. This annoyed Jen because if she ever wanted to watch her shows she would need to do it in the living room. To fix this occasionally she would record her shows on the TIVO. One morning she was fed up with not being able to watch a different show and she stopped my recording. Well a couple days latter, when attempting to watch the stopped episode i was confused as to why it only recorded the first 7 minutes and to avoid my typical investigation, Jen immediately confessed. While i was initially annoyed, i understood she meant no harm because she thought it was a rerun i had already seen, and I was ready to drop the issue until i learned that she stopped my show in order to watch one of the few shows she had previously recorded. To this we could only both laugh about.

The lesson I've learned is that Jen is self-aware that functionality is not important to her. Jen is a very smart person, but i guess believes life is wasted navigating through cluttered functionality that is rarely used. In Jen's world sleeping bags and DVRs are all the same, and if they don't comply, she either does not use the additional functionality or avoids learning the alternate altogether. I've met girls that have just a few purses, but functional ones with many pockets. Not Jen, she would rather own 20 bags in different sizes in case she needed to bring more stuff. Furniture, Jen prefers the basics, no fancy recliners or large entertainment centers. Jen does not want our DVDs out in the open, but thinks a big entertainment center with storage compartments looks worse. Her solution, multiple decorative boxes and baskets spread through the entire house. This makes finding DVDs an adventure. For her functionality is not important, and beauty and fluidity is found in the simple.