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This is a really tedious entry. I'm not sure what interest there is in it for anyone else at all, and it's all stuff i *know*. I didn't need to write to think this through.
One of the reflections, as i kept thinking, "This is boring," was, "I wonder how Christine felt when i was so passionate about making a joint decision about our china before we got married, and how she felt a year ago as we discussed this again?" I have been trained to passionately care about dishes and decor, yet i've been stripping it away over the years, questioning if what i was taught really is consistent with my values.
I still seem to care about balancing the acquiring housewares that are aesthetic and pleasing with simplicity, steering away from obsessive collecting, and balancing quality with cost.
When i was in high school, my mother was buying Pfaltzcraft, the Village pattern in cream with a brown stencil of a folk-proportioned fleur de lis. My aunt was getting Yorktown, a similar pattern in blue tones. I grew fond of Heritage, white with twelve sides, "architecturally inspired." I liked the distinctiveness of the angular sides in the otherwise simple pattern. I purchased a four place setting collection at some point, used it in college and on going. Mom and other family purchased some other pieces but no more place settings. Mom did get us a collection of small square sandwich plates, seconds, about twenty.
Many years pass. A few pieces are broken. Some disappear. We get rid of the microwave in 2000 and don't replace it until 2008.
This particular microwave is combined with a convection oven. For satisfactory popcorn popping, the bag needs to be elevated on a plate. Some of the small square sandwich places come out with what appear to be contour lines. Moisture and oils in the plate from the many years of use must heat, expand through the previously invisible cracks in the glaze, creating a web of dark hairlines all around the plate. Ew.
Suddenly i had a practical reason to purge the everyday dishes. We spend time talking about what we need and decide on only two place settings. (We have china, we'll use that if anyone comes over. It holds pizza just fine.) We need different bowl sizes, and different plate sizes. After a little scouting, we purchase Noritake colorwave in raspberry, graphite, and blue, two standard place settings and a pair of rice bowls (deeper bowls than the wider bowls that came with the place setting) and pasta plates. Simple and colorful on the outside, it suits us.
A week or so ago, Christine dropped a rice bowl. Since we had just enough, getting another seemed like a wise plan. Part of the scouting decision was made on the fact that there's lots of these dishes on eBay. (Popularity has a value.) So recognizing that more plates (for cooking on in the microwave) wouldn't be problematic, i bid on a place setting and won. I should probably purge an '50s glass plate and a couple mugs from the cabinet to keep things in balance.
We now have a mug, rice bowl, dinner, and salad plate in the dark grape-purple finish.
One of the reflections, as i kept thinking, "This is boring," was, "I wonder how Christine felt when i was so passionate about making a joint decision about our china before we got married, and how she felt a year ago as we discussed this again?" I have been trained to passionately care about dishes and decor, yet i've been stripping it away over the years, questioning if what i was taught really is consistent with my values.
I still seem to care about balancing the acquiring housewares that are aesthetic and pleasing with simplicity, steering away from obsessive collecting, and balancing quality with cost.
When i was in high school, my mother was buying Pfaltzcraft, the Village pattern in cream with a brown stencil of a folk-proportioned fleur de lis. My aunt was getting Yorktown, a similar pattern in blue tones. I grew fond of Heritage, white with twelve sides, "architecturally inspired." I liked the distinctiveness of the angular sides in the otherwise simple pattern. I purchased a four place setting collection at some point, used it in college and on going. Mom and other family purchased some other pieces but no more place settings. Mom did get us a collection of small square sandwich plates, seconds, about twenty.
Many years pass. A few pieces are broken. Some disappear. We get rid of the microwave in 2000 and don't replace it until 2008.
This particular microwave is combined with a convection oven. For satisfactory popcorn popping, the bag needs to be elevated on a plate. Some of the small square sandwich places come out with what appear to be contour lines. Moisture and oils in the plate from the many years of use must heat, expand through the previously invisible cracks in the glaze, creating a web of dark hairlines all around the plate. Ew.
Suddenly i had a practical reason to purge the everyday dishes. We spend time talking about what we need and decide on only two place settings. (We have china, we'll use that if anyone comes over. It holds pizza just fine.) We need different bowl sizes, and different plate sizes. After a little scouting, we purchase Noritake colorwave in raspberry, graphite, and blue, two standard place settings and a pair of rice bowls (deeper bowls than the wider bowls that came with the place setting) and pasta plates. Simple and colorful on the outside, it suits us.
A week or so ago, Christine dropped a rice bowl. Since we had just enough, getting another seemed like a wise plan. Part of the scouting decision was made on the fact that there's lots of these dishes on eBay. (Popularity has a value.) So recognizing that more plates (for cooking on in the microwave) wouldn't be problematic, i bid on a place setting and won. I should probably purge an '50s glass plate and a couple mugs from the cabinet to keep things in balance.
We now have a mug, rice bowl, dinner, and salad plate in the dark grape-purple finish.
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I nearly bought a tea-bowl tonight. Two, actually. One was technically a matcha bowl (although not labeled as such, but it was the broad, tall, flat kind of teabowl), and I don't even drink matcha. Ha!