Abstract
In this article, I consider the formal and textual attributes of Apartment Therapy, a popular design blog, to argue that it offers “aspirational disposability” as an imaginative solution to commodity capitalism’s problems of both overconsumption and conformity. I first historically ground my discussion in an examination of the roots of midcentury modernism and the notion of the home as a curative space. I then discuss “everyday modernism” as a consumerist formation that informs aspirational disposability, particularly through Ikea goods. Finally, I turn to an analysis of the main features of Apartment Therapy that articulate aspirational disposability. Midcentury modernism, and its disposable incarnations from Ikea, allows readers to “hack” material culture to construct an affective domestic space, engaging in therapeutics of the self while substituting taste for class mobility.
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