The ketchup packets live in a glass vase meant for flowers.

They bloomed bright red against the window that never really opened. Heinz petals fanned out alongside soy sauce and sugar packets. Her mother says they are beautiful there, her father says they are practical. Eve says nothing, but when a friend came over to study, she slid the vase behind the toaster.

Their apartment was a one-bedroom that smelled faintly stale, like plastic. Every surface was piled with something useful: plastic forks and wooden chopsticks from takeout bags, cracked Tupperware full of twist ties, buttons in old cookie tins. Eve used to joke that her parents were building a museum of trash. Now, at 17, the joke embarrassed her. 

Her mother hadn’t always kept things. It started the year Eve was born, when her father lost his job and they moved into an apartment where the walls peeled from dampness and the heater shuddered like an old engine. A neighbor had given her mother a bag of rubber bands to tie up grocery bags, and when the rent went up that winter, she began saving everything: lids, buttons, newspapers, bent paperclips. “You never know,” she would say. “One day, we might need it.”

And sometimes, they did. A broken backpack zipper was held together with string, a ripped lunch bag was patched by masking tape. When Eve was small, it seemed magical how her mother could repair nearly anything. But now, the magic had hardened into clutter. Jars stacked on jars, closets swollen and bulging with the weight of what might one day be useful.

In economics class, her teacher stood in front of a slideshow of rising graphs and crowded landfills. “Consumerism thrives on excess, and capitalism depends on growth,” he stated. “But sustainability requires restraint. Sometimes, less is more.”

In English class, her teacher leaned against his desk stacked with marked essays. “Cut the fancy words. If you need three sentences to say something, try saying it in one,” he said. “Brevity is power. In life — and in writing — less is more.”

In art class, her teacher dipped a damp brush into a tray of pale blue watercolor paint. “Too much paint, and your art will get chalky. Too much water, and your paper will rip,” she warned. “Remember, less is more!”

Less is more. The phrase circled Eve’s mind like a moth. Eve thought of the vase filled with condiment flowers, the kitchen drawers packed with dingy shoelaces, and her mother’s hands folding old newspapers into a towering stack.

– – –

The eviction notice came on a Tuesday, taped crooked to the front door.

Eve felt a sharp, guilty relief. Finally, we’ll have to throw things away, she thought. But they packed everything.

Boxes sprouted everywhere that week, collapsing and reforming. When her mother turned away, Eve began slipping things into the trash instead — this was her minute and invisible act of rebellion. She tossed old receipts, stray twist ties, lids with no containers, a handful of buttons, things she was sure her mother wouldn’t notice. The sound of them hitting the plastic bin felt like exhaling. Less is more.

But when the moving truck came, her mother packed until the corners of the room looked barren. She kept the vase, of course, wrapped twice in towels. She crammed every drawer of saved things. In the backseat, boxes painfully dug into Eve’s knees. She wanted to open the window, but it only opened halfway.

The new apartment was not much different. Smaller, maybe colder, but cleaner. For weeks afterward, Eve’s mother rummaged through boxes carefully.

One night in December, Eve found her mother near the hallway mirror, holding her winter coat closed with one hand. The top button was missing, preventing it from closing all the way. A thin thread dangled where it used to be.

“I had one just like it,” her mother murmured to herself, her thumb brushing the fabric. “I saved it somewhere, I’m sure.”

Eve’s throat tightened. She pictured the button immediately — small and pearl-colored, skittering across the inside of the trash can before disappearing completely beneath a nest of crumpled paper and plastic. 

Her mother paused at the front of the coat, fingers resting where the button should be.

“Oh,” she said.

Then she smiled, small and polite, the way someone does when a cashier gives them the wrong change.

“That’s okay.”

All winter, Eve watched her mother pull her coat a little tighter every morning before stepping outside. The gap from the missing button opened just enough for the cold to slip in. The air cut at her exposed throat, reddening the pale skin and raising a rash of goosebumps that crept toward her collarbone, the fine hairs there standing straight against the wind. She neither mentioned the cold nor replaced the button.

The vase of ketchup packets sat on its new windowsill, an accusing red glaring back at the sunlight.