Life is too short (to hang on to dishes you don't love)

It's White Elephant Sale time again! This is the mega-garage/warehouse sale put on by the Oakland Museum. Honestly, it's so big it's overwhelming unless you have something specific you're looking for.

This year Wayne was looking for vinyl records to add to our ever-growing collection. And what was I looking for? I didn't know. Then, on the first day, my friend Mary mentioned the beautiful sets of dishes they had. She didn't need dishes she said, but it reminded me that I had a whole set of blue and white sailboat dishes I had inherited from a long-ago relationship that I had never liked much. I mean, they were OK and there were a lot of them - a double set - so I used them whenever I had a big party and needed lots of plates or bowls. But they didn't give me pleasure. They weren't really my style.

So I went over to the dishes section at the White Elephant and looked. If I found something I liked, I figured I'd buy them and bring my old set in to donate the next day. Luck was with me - here's what I found . . .




9 of these gorgeous orange plates at $2 a plate, plus one salad plate to match for $1. Total: $19











And 12 of these raised-pattern white plates at $1 a plate (what a bargain!) plus 4 wide soup dishes to match at $2 apiece and a gravy boat for $4. Total: $24

These are both dish patterns I love and I bought all of them plus 4 brilliantly colored blue, green, and red salad plates at $2 apiece.

The next day I packed up all the sailboat dishes, including the platters and bowls and the baking dishes and the creamer and sugar bowl and the gravy boat, and donated them to the White Elephant. Someone would love them and buy them. Suddenly there was SO MUCH ROOM in my dish cupboard, which is the hutch I'm still stripping in the dining room.



Here are my new plates (plus a few Pottery Barn Colors plates I already had and love) on the shelf.  Yay!

I'm really enjoying my new plates and use them all the time. They give me great pleasure, as they should.


Baggin' it

Alameda County, where I live, finally decided to do its part to reduce non-compostable garbage and try to save some trees. Effective January 1 this year they outlawed plastic bags in grocery and other stores, and mandated a fee for paper bags, if customers fail to bring their own.

I fully support this action, having seen enough photos of dolphins choking on plastic bags and knowing those bags have a half-life of nearly forever. And I have nice cloth bags that will work fine and, even better, are reusable almost to infinity. Nevertheless, it took weeks for me to remember to bring the bags to the store. At first I had trouble remembering to take them from home, so I put a bunch into the back seat of the car. Then I had trouble remembering to bring them from the car into the store. Drat. I can't tell you how many times I left Trader Joe's with my arms full of milk, orange juice, yogurt, and bananas, clutching a box of dishwasher detergent in my two free fingers. I got tired of it.

Now, almost three months later, I've got it down. This post is in celebration of baggin', and of course the bags that make it possible. . .

A few of the bags I have in my car.

Some wine bags I also have in my car. Who knew I needed FOUR wine bags that hold six bottles each? Oh well!

A few more bags from my traveling life (Cambridge, UK, Maui, Holland America Cruise Lines). And that's not all of them. I guess I have enough bags!







Last week I got a new kind of bag, and are they ever cute! And good for the environment too! These are planting bags, and they're made from recycled plastic bottles. I'm using them to plant potatoes in a plot that's become way too overgrown with roots, and I don't have the time or energy to dig the silly thing up and put new soil in.


Here are the Potato Bags, each filled with dirt and a seed potato (some are Reds and some are Yukon Golds). Not only are they cute as can be, they're sturdy, are supposed to last several years, and let water through for good drainage. I got them from GreenhouseMegastore.com. Gonna be some yummy potatoes...


So, here's to baggin' it!