Self Sufficient Living

Re: "Too good for everyday"

DigitalMat — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:21:16 GMT

Edey:
The desire to have the Victorian house is sort of there, with the pretty lace and decoration and all, but I'm just too lazy to maintain all that. I want my time to go to creative endeavors, not cleaning house 18 hours a day to present an image. Edey

I think it is OK for the Victorian stuff, but I find it very busy in the patterns and think it would raise my blood pressure if I was in it all the time. I also agree with you on the amount of work it would be. Fortunately, my wife and I both agree on the type of home we want to maintain. Life is sweet! (and laid back country!)

Re: "Too good for everyday"

MarthaMFI — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:41:27 GMT

I have some china I bought at a thrift store but we don't use it. crystal from wedding gifts and freebies from iga but only use wineglasses once in a while. same with my tea cup collection. thankfully I have a small china cabinet!

I don't host holiday dinners so dressing up the table doesn't happen. when the kids are older I will set the table fancy once in a while.

Re: "Too good for everyday"

Edey — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:37:48 GMT

The desire to have the Victorian house is sort of there, with the pretty lace and decoration and all, but I'm just too lazy to maintain all that. I want my time to go to creative endeavors, not cleaning house 18 hours a day to present an image. Edey

Re: "Too good for everyday"

DigitalMat — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 05:14:19 GMT

Edey:
It took a long time for me to realize that crystal and silver and china just wasn't my style. I've got too much country in my background. Pfaltzgraf would have been more my style, but even that wasn't affordable.

I know what you mean. We may never have gotten into Pfaltzgraf if we hadn't come into my grandmother's set. On the other hand, my brother and his wife are into crystal and china, and have a Victorian house. We visit them and they visit us, and are perfectly happy.

Sometimes it takes some living for us to get comfortable with ourselves enough to admit what we really like and being perfectly happy to just 'be'. Other people who come to our house seem to think it's perfectly natural for us to be 'us' in our own enviroment. They of course, have the right to do the same in their own homes with no harassment from me! hehehe!

Re: "Too good for everyday"

Edey — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:33:36 GMT

NicciJade:
for a potjie (a wonderful South African meal, cooked in a 3-legged cast iron pot over an open fire, and very informal

This sounds interesting. Would you mind sharing it in the foods forum? Edey

Re: "Too good for everyday"

NicciJade — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:16:53 GMT

I worked hard to get my mother to accept that every day is a special day. She stil has her "special"china etc, but they get brought out a lot more often than when I was a child at home (even though, thank goodness, she's gone through a good couple of sets of "good china").

I use what I love, every day - what, otherwise, is the point of having them? Just had some friends over for a potjie (a wonderful South African meal, cooked in a 3-legged cast iron pot over an open fire, and very informal) and I used my "best" china.

If something breaks, so be it: at least I had the joy of it before it broke.

Re: "Too good for everyday"

Edey — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:15:44 GMT

This is a silly tale, but when we married I felt deprived because we couldn't afford the full set of china, silverware and crystal glasses. My Sil married into a family with money and she received all of these; her MiL would have been ashamed if SiL had not had them to open as wedding gifts. She even received a china cupboard to store it in. They did have dinner parties often so the utensils and all got used, plus their holiday dinners were always formal. Us, on the other hand, never lived like that, and eventually if I had acquired all those fine things they maybe would have been used once or twice, if at all, and wouldn't have had the room to store them 11 months out of the year. It took a long time for me to realize that crystal and silver and china just wasn't my style. I've got too much country in my background. Pfaltzgraf would have been more my style, but even that wasn't affordable. I've had 2 different sets of Corel plates, one matched set of stainless utensils, and did once buy some lead crystal goblets at a Big Lots type store for 99 cents apiece, for the one time we had a sit down fancy holiday dinner. Years later they went to a thrift store. Edey

Re: "Too good for everyday"

karen kay — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 14:17:17 GMT

gayla50:

when I pass my Children will never have spend weeks going through the stuff ...

That could have been said by my mom , only the other way around. 2 days before she died, she was at my home and i was showing her and my sister the things i had put out in my bedroom. i told them i wasn't saving anything, that if i had it , i was using it. She looked at me and said " you girls are going to have a time when i die. Little did we know that 2 days later, we would find out. later on i went to help with the sorting, etc. my , my , everything she had ever bought she still had. the only thing is that she used it , but would change things season to season. She grew up Very poor and it was just hard for her to let go. Most of the outbuildings are still full as like I said, " if i am not going to use it, i don't want it" My sister has all this now and i"m sure it will still all be there when "someday or season" ever gets here.

Re: "Too good for everyday"

DigitalMat — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 13:00:59 GMT

rolo:
Borrowed that phrase "too good for everyday" from another thread on this site. Self sufficiency is a part of simple living. How many of us have perfectly good, unused or barely used items packed away because the item is "too good for everyday"?

About the only things we pack away and not use are the china we got at our wedding 25 years ago. We are not china people, and this stuff is so fancy as to be impractical. It IS displayed in our cabinets however. So I guess we get some use of it. When my grandmother passed away and no one wanted her Pfaltzgraf Village stoneware, we jumped on it, and that became our everyday dishes, even for guests and everything. It is just 'us'. We never try to be any more fancy than what we are in our everyday life. We have never broken a single piece of the fancy china, (since we never use it) but we have broken some stoneware pieces. We scour antique shops finding old pieces of the Village pattern, and always have spares available.

At Christmastime, we bring out specific Christmas things like an heirloom candy dish, and other things we keep safe through the year for the season. The way we look at it, unless it has some heirloom value to you, if you aren't going to ever use it, why keep it? When a friend of mine bought a new house, she heard we had gotten our new stoneware and was planning to sell a bunch of our old dishes, and various other kitchen items that we replaced in a yard sale. She wanted to see the stuff, so I took representative samples to work with me, 3 boxes worth with item listings and prices. When I came back to the office, she simply said, "I want it all!" She populated her whole kitchen, and we didn't have a yard sale. She is still thrilled with the stuff, and we don't miss it at all since we had replacements in the new pattern for each item.

I can see how the depression made some people save things for the proverbial rainy day. It could happen again, but I sure hope not. There has been such a profusion of goods produced over the last few decades that we wouldn't run out of things anytime soon since everybody seems to have boxes of old things they don't use anymore packed away. We need to have a yard sale again because of the stuff we have accumulated since we almost had the last yard sale! hehehe!

Re: "Too good for everyday"

Deborahmichelle — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:49:32 GMT

Dear All, There is a strong Jewish tradition that the 1st question a person who has passed on is asked in the World to Come is, Did you take part in all licit pleasures? G-d the Creator put us on earth to enjoy His bounty. Yours in Him, Deb

Re: "Too good for everyday"

karen604 — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:36:57 GMT

For years when I was growing up we used these awful dishes that were chipped and cracked. Mom had lovely china that only came out at Thanksgiving and graduations. the year my parents moved to Florida Mom decided that the Good china was too much of a bother to pack and move. The chipped stuff was packed very carefully. This agravated Dad so much that those dishes did not last a month in the new abode. He made her buy new dishes at the outlet store. She confided that this everyday ware cost several times what the good stuff cost 40 years before!

Now those good dishes. My girlfriend's Mom purchased them for about $50 service for 12 and all the serving pieces at the moving/garage sale. My childhood girlfriend used it for years ...as her everyday stuff!

(I lived out of state when all this happened.)

Re: "Too good for everyday"

loves2cook — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 02:05:01 GMT

Cinnamonhuskies:
Not me. If I am not using it, then I don't need to have it.

This is the way I feel about it. We use what we have around here. I don't like knick knacks because they just sit and collect dust. If it's not useful, then it must go.

Re: "Too good for everyday"

Joyous — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 23:24:15 GMT

Once I won a contest to get for free one pair of shoes from the fanciest local shoe store. No stipulations or limitations - one free pair of shoes, any shoes, no strings attached (unless the shoe had laces, of course . This is the place in town that sells Cole Haans, to give you an idea of the fanciness. (I wouldn't even have known what Cole Haans were except this store promotes them so.)

I was fine for shoes, so I took the husband, and we were treated wonderfully even though we weren't spending money. His only pair of comfortable shoes were leaking water, so I thought new shoes were definitely in order. At the time, there was no way we could have afforded even a cheap pair of new shoes, let alone a high-quality pair. We left with a pair of shoes he loved - handsome, regal even, burgundy leather, comfortable, European. Would have been $200 but we won them for nothing.

And he won't wear them. It's been almost three years and he won't even take them out of the box. He's still wearing the leaky pair.

The conversation goes something like this:

Him: My feet are wet.
Me: You're wearing the leaky shoes. Why don't you wear your other shoes?
Him: They were $200.
Me: They were free!
Him: They were $200.
Me: God gave you those shoes for free and you are wasting His providence and on Judgment Day when He says to you, "Why didn't you wear the shoes I gave you?" you are going to have to answer Him and I won't be there to help you, so you better come up with your answer now.

Re: "Too good for everyday"

gayla50 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:17:41 GMT

we had all our nice things put away then my MIL passed away my BiL & Sil my DH and I spent 3 weeks cleaning out her house there was a set china for 12 neither of her sons had even and the silver they did not know about .. we came home and Immediately we used the silver and china , I got out the towel, soaps , linens and we decided that we use every for our family .. then 4 years later we did the same thing when my Daddy passed .. we use the silver and china for Sunday , birthdays or because it Tuesday .. I dont save anything all the new bathsets I got for Christmas or Mother day I use it the cologne my DH gave me for our anniversity I wear it one my DIl wears it.

when I pass my Children will never have spend weeks going through the stuff ...

Re: "Too good for everyday"

MarthaMFI — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:30:43 GMT

I can understand that. I have pots from a set from 18 yrs ago. work fine so why change. have lots of kitchen stuff like that.