Museum of
Ordinary ThingsA little attention changes everything.
A pair of scissors with dark handles against an orange background.
The collectionExhibit No. 014

Household law

Not for paper.

A perfectly good pair of scissors with conditions.

The story behind the object
The storyplayful

They had a specific drawer. They had an assigned purpose. They had, on more than one occasion, been used to open a packet of crisps. This was not their assigned purpose.

The owner could identify an unauthorised use from across the room. We never established how. There was a particular silence, followed by the words: those are my good scissors.

I own them now. Yesterday I caught someone reaching for a cardboard box. Apparently the silence is hereditary.

A fictional story, written for this sample exhibit.

What ordinary thing would you keep?

Make an exhibit of your own

Fictional sample exhibit · Back to the collection

Photograph by Behnam Norouzi / Unsplash ↗

A closer look · The full photograph

A pair of scissors with dark handles against an orange background.

An ordinary thing, given extraordinary attention.

The Museum of Ordinary Things

Nothing ordinary
about what we keep.

A ticket. A chipped cup. A watch that no longer works. Some objects matter for reasons no label can quite explain. This is a place to try.

This early exhibit explores how a photograph and a few words can give an everyday thing extraordinary attention.

Create an exhibit with your own photograph and words. Save it privately, then choose when to publish it. The two stories in our sample exhibit are fictional.