"What is decisive in collecting is that the object is detached from all its original functions in order to enter into the closest conceivable relation to things of the same kind. This relation is the diametric opposite of any utility, and falls into the peculiar category of completeness. What is this 'completeness'? It is a grand attempt to overcome the wholly irrational character of the object's mere presence at hand through its integration into a new, expressly devised historical system: the collection....Collecting is a form of practical memory, and of all the profane manifestations of 'nearness' it is the most binding." (205) The opposition of collection to utility comes to an interesting tension in the home. On the one hand, most household objects retain, at least ostensibly and often in fact, their practical function. But their very amassing, their given place and psychic investment, tends to inscribe on them a certain element of the human memory device. It is by these materials that we navigate the memory of the everyday.

(Benjamin, Walter. The Arcades Project. Trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002. Print.)