Forget bar carts, these are the home decor items that define adulthood

Bar carts, drink trolleys, mobile liquor cabinets – it doesn’t matter what you call them because they are suddenly everywhere.

They used to exist primarily on Pinterest and the more dramatic office scenes of Mad Men but as we become more proficient at home cooking, more enamoured of our home decor and more enthusiastic about posting the results on social media, it’s only natural that we’d want to artfully display our plonk, too.

Real Living  magazine claims they’re a “tell-tale sign you’ve entered adulthood” and GQ concurs, claiming that a bar cart “makes you look like a verified sex-haver …” while The Urban List says a drinks trolley is “part of being an adult”. A statement that is both obvious, (because of the alcohol) and strangely arbitrary, mainly because a twee display of bottles seems like a tell-tale sign of a dandy, but here we are.

Regardless, it does give rise to the question, if not a bar cart – (which, in truth, appears a little like the 2019 version of a hot tub) – then what, exactly, is the item in our homes that defines adulthood?  Double bed? Teenagers have them. A home office? Those are fading.

Find out why Jane made a seachange at 25 on Somewhere Else: 

No, the signs that you’ve reached adulthood past the point of no return are a little less hip than a bar cart so for those not ready, cast your eyes away now or prepare to see the truth of what it means to enter the realm of complete surrender.

A magazine rack

It’s a small thing, but it signifies that you read words in print and are of an age where you are still willing to buy them. You might have up to two weeks’ worth of newspapers in there as well. And if you have, then you must be well and truly over the age of 30. Nobody is saying that people under the age of 30 don’t read magazines, but if they do they fetishise their copies, keeping them in a neat pile on display, perhaps fanning them out over a sideboard and not an old rack next to the toilet, for example.

A pile of laundry

If you live with housemates then your laundry stays where it belongs – on a chair or a bed in your room. If you live with your partner, then for the first blissful months, you’ll pop those clean clothes in each other’s drawers, wondering aloud why anyone would ever fight about housework! But if you’re out of the honeymoon stage, and into the serious flow of regular adult life, that laundry is going anywhere it damn well pleases – on the floor, on a bench, on the couch and more often than not on the dining room table.

Photo frames

No, not over-sized ones, the kind you hang on your wall like art. We are talking sterling silver straight from the fourth floor of David Jones, with a photo of a wedding, or a baby or a wedding with that baby in it. Because only those in the deep trenches of adulthood go to the trouble of printing out all the ones they have in their phone.

NB: the older you are, the more frames you acquire until it’s just you on your deathbed and nowhere to look but deep into the soulless eyes of family members looking moderately awkward in staged portraits.

Small plasticy things

It could be Lego, it could be a PJ Mask figurine, it might be an unidentifiable pink thing that squeaks when you accidentally step on it at 2.30am. But know this: it’s not restricted to kids’ toys. You may have adopted your first puppy, or you and your partner have waded into the pet thing with a kitten. But if you have any of the golden three, then congratulations – you’re now grown up enough to look after something other than yourself.

Stupid small plastic things are now part of your life, and no matter how much you tidy up or believe you’ve tidied up you will never fully eradicate them. The knowledge of which is enough to drive you to wine. So, where’s that damn bar cart?