New Stuff Makes Life Worth Living

Most of us appreciate new stuff, especially timesaving gadgets and accessories.

I certainly do and never could understand why anyone would continue using old things when modern versions offer so much more. Often it’s not even the cost.

It was difficult to get Catherine to understand that because she grew up learning to make do with what you had. As long as something still works, why replace it? One of her grandmothers used an ancient twin tub washer until the 1980s (and she was in her 80s). Her house was practically a museum.

But over the years I think Catherine saw me spending our money on items of questionable need and decided it was her turn. It started with catalogs. I never knew there could be so many catalogs. Many times that’s all we get in the mail. She mainly receives catalogs for clothing, gadgets and junk.

It’s the ones that sell party napkins and T-shirts with cute (and often vulgar) sayings on them that grab her attention. Some catalogs sell “As Seen on TV” items. You’ve seen them. Good for birthday and holiday gag gifts when you can’t find anything sensible.

Let Your Fingers Do the Ordering

But it wasn’t until I introduced her to internet shopping that I lost all control. Now there’s a package every day. She’s an organizer so we have storage containers of all sizes and shapes for the things she buys. This includes Tupperware to banker boxes to a whole row of file cabinets in our garage. Nearly every key we have is labeled and on a ring.

When we first got cell phones Catherine bought cases, cords, cord organizers and arm mounts for workouts. Most are discarded now because everything changes. That’s sometimes the hard part because if you’re into gadgets, you need to know that you will lose money and end up with a bunch of still-fully-functional stuff that you replaced because the new versions had newer options. And no, you can’t rent a storage unit.

I will never have as many garage tools as she has domestic tools. If I did, the garage would be full. I’m not talking about the kitchen appliances we all have, like a toaster. But how many of you have large wooden tweezers to retrieve a hot piece of toast instead of facing the hazards of using a fork or knife (or your fingers). I think our next toaster will be the new kind you can see through the sides and watch it burn.

She was good with my suggestion to get a stove top mat. But she didn’t want a magnetic tray to hold spices on top of the stove since spices go bad when exposed to heat. Something good for all men to know.

The only way I’ve come to learn about the many culinary devices she has is by emptying the dishwasher. A lot of times I have no idea what they are used for, just which drawers they go into.

She has egg separators, funnels, grinders, meat chopper, tomato slicer and measuring cups that fold flat. She has pans that stack so I need to remove them all to place the frying pan on the bottom. She even still has a Salad Spinner.

Repair or Replace

We recently replaced our 20-year-old washer, having first discussed getting it fixed until we realized repairing it made no sense for many reasons. I think she knows we made the right choice. So much so that we quickly bought the optional pedestals for these front-load models so we don’t need to kneel on the floor to load and empty them. My new knee is very thankful. They also each have a drawer to store more stuff. We can monitor them from our phones and it notifies us when a load is done. Keeps us on schedule.

Catherine has used a couple different types of grocery bag sets designed specially for a standard grocery cart. One bag is even insulated for cold stuff. What’s funny is a lot of customers are impressed and ask about them but we’ve never seen anyone else using them.

We both agree that if something affordable can provide a time-saving service, it’s a necessity not a gadget or frill. We also agree that we’re not going to deprive ourselves the satisfaction of buying things that we want now while we still can enjoy them.

Since many of the things we buy are made in China, tariffs might cause us to rethink all of this. Maybe our purchases will dwindle to a delivery every other day.

I wonder what Amazon thinks of that.