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Your perfectly good stuff has one tiny problem
Why we replace things that aren't broken, plus the art of reconnecting.
Greg Sullivan
October 29, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes
“Old things are better than new things, because they've got stories in them, Ethan.”
― Kami Garcia
It's remarkable how much power we give the little things. A tiny scratch can convince us we need a new phone, and a little awkwardness can keep us from reaching out to an old friend. Today, researchers explain the first phenomenon, while Erik Barnes shares a wonderfully simple solution to the second. And our Halloween project is nearly complete. One last vote before we reveal what you've built!
Money
Researchers have a name for our intolerance of imperfections.
There's a little scratch on your phone. You can't see it unless the light hits just right, and it doesn't affect the phone's performance one bit. But now that you've noticed it, it's all you can see. And they did just release that new one…
If this sounds familiar, you're not alone. Researchers have identified a psychological tendency they call the "desire for perfect products," and it's not quite the same thing as being a perfectionist. You can be perfectly comfortable with your own shortcomings while being utterly intolerant of a chip in your favorite coffee mug.
In a new study, researchers Rebecca Walker Reczek, Aprajita Gautam, and Rajagopal Raghunathan found that this preference can influence everything from how we shop to whether we'll repair something or simply replace it.
But the researchers also found something rather encouraging about our relationship with imperfect possessions. A small shift in how we think about flaws might help us appreciate the things we already own, scratches and all.
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GOOD reader Georgia Ehrreich sent this absurd image. Look at those colors! That’s too much. It’s just too much! I love it. She took this picture from the top of Lutsen Mountain on Minnesota's North Shore. “You take a gondola ride up, and if the timing is right, you get a glorious display of color!”
Do you have a GOOD picture to share?
Send us your best images, and we may feature them as the image of the day. Be sure to tell us a bit about your pic.
Build our perfect Halloween: The evening
One last decision: How are we spending our perfect Halloween?Tomorrow, we reveal the Halloween you’ve built. Where’s it happening? |
Yesterday’s Results
Yesterday, we asked: How much effort are we putting into Halloween costumes? Our most ambitious costume-makers have been voted off the porch. That’s a lot of work for a single evening, after all.
Full transformation. You won’t recognize me. (10.5%)
I’m not going to spoil the winner, but GOOD reader A Kans had a costume so clever I had to share. “I glued about 30 Smarties candies on a pair of pants and became a "smarty pants".”
Voted off the porch so far: whatever’s on the other channel, candy corn, and now full costume transformations. Tomorrow we reveal the winners, so cast your vote today to help us build the perfect spooky Halloween night!
Generations | Courtesy of Upworthy
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Gen Xer rattles off ‘useless info’ stuck in his brain from the ’80s. It’s delightfully relatable. | ||
“Gen X has been storing this nonsense for decades and we can’t remember why we walked into a room.” | ||
By Cecily Knobler | ||
So many of us have had that moment. We walk into a room and can’t remember why or what we’re looking for. Or even more frustrating and fun, we can’t recall our own phone number and yet can remember all seven digits from a one-hit-wonder ’80s song. | ||
Of course, Generation X doesn’t have a patent on this. But in a funny clip circulating on Instagram, one Gen Xer hilariously replies to a Millennial who claimed she had “more useless information stored in her brain than any other generation.” Hold our Zimas, because this man comes with “memory” receipts. | ||
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Society
It’s amazing what ten words can do.
Somehow you don’t know it’s happened until it has, but one day you think of that friend and realize it’s been so long that unless you’ve got a good excuse, reaching out would be... weird.
A networking expert has a disarmingly simple answer for that exact modern dilemma: send the text anyway, just strip out all the pressure, apology, and emotional throat-clearing. Her suggested message is only ten words long, and it somehow does the impossible by making reconnection feel casual, warm, and not like you’re trying to reboot a canceled sitcom.
As Erik Barnes explains, what makes it work is what it avoids. No “sorry it’s been forever,” no fake urgency, no giant bundle of expectation dropped into someone else’s notifications. Just a small human signal that says: I thought of you. That’s it. Clean, brave, oddly powerful.
On October 29, 1998, John Glenn returned to space aboard the shuttle Discovery, 36 years after becoming the first American to orbit Earth. At 77, he became the oldest person ever to travel to space at the time.
Glenn participated in experiments studying the effects of weightlessness on aging. Not a bad second act for a man who'd already made history once.
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💬 From the group text…
These amazingly dramatic photos of toys looking real come right out of my memory of what it was like to play with these things as a boy!
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Until tomorrow, it’s getting down to the wire! Carve the pumpkins and get the candy while the store still has some.