Things are piling up. The to-do lists are multiplying. Spring cleaning tempts but is easily put off. One of my sisters has been updating me on what she’s discovered as she cleans her kitchen cupboards, in anticipation of a yard sale.
Even without opening the cupboard doors (a sometimes hazardous thing to do), I know I probably have at least a dozen pieces of cookware I could do without. I think there should be a limit to the number of frying pans a person is allowed to own. I know from my history research that in the olden days, well-to-do families didn’t own many cooking dishes, and sometimes these were so precious they were part of a man’s estate. I just read a will from the 1700s where a man left cooking pots to his three daughters – one to each, but the “newest kittle” he left to his son, along with several hundred acres of land located “betwen the bruks,” a fairly vague legal description.
Things were sometimes much simpler in the old days. They didn’t have to worry about what to do with six frying pans of various sizes and composition, nor three colanders or four large spoons with holes in them – each in good condition, too good to throw away but not a high ticket item at a yard sale.
Over the years I’ve always been a reader and in addition to a large collection of useless cookware, I have hundreds of books. Some are probably worth a fortune but most, now that they’ve been read, could be sold. The problem is that readers are fewer in number than you’d think. As I weed out the bookshelves, I feel I know each book. I remember what it was about and how much I enjoyed reading it and just for a minute, consider re-reading it. Common sense intervenes and I realize if it took me more than 50 years to read all these books – well, there’s surely not enough time to read them all again and I do want to keep up with the new books being published. The wonderful old tomes are tossed into the box marked “Sale” accompanied by a wish that some book-starved individual will visit my yard sale.
The yard sale is about fourth or fifth on my most important to-do list. Topping the list is “kittens” which is shorthand for “get rid of the kittens.” There are only three of them – this time. There may not be a next time, so if “get a kitten” is on your to-do list, be sure to contact me soon. Or the three little kittens will find their way into the yard sale box.
See you next week.
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