These 10 simple objects ruled our lives in 2020. | Sarah Lawrence for Vox

In 2020, toilet paper, kiddie pools, fireworks, and more held new significance.

This year has deeply changed us — all at once, things were no longer as they were. That was followed by the slowly dawning realization that the unfathomable was here to stay. The country was rattled; we became situated in the kind of chaos that hadn’t even ever occurred to us as a possibility.

We don’t quite have our footing yet; we’re still gathering our bearings. When you’re thrown for a loop this large, it is hard not to be angry and irritable and, as the circumstances demanded of us, lonely. We’re still looking for explanations: why us, why now, why like this — the world was so relentlessly disorienting every single day. We’ve learned