Solving the China Problem
So, this week’s “need to do this before we move” task is solving the china problem.
As I have been digging through the garage I unearthed the china.
Five boxes of china. All wrapped in newspaper (remember that?) dated 2005, which was when I took it out of the china cabinet I’d bought for it in the dining area, wrapped it up and stuffed it into the garage in cold storage. I need to admit: we’ve never used this china. Not once. And we have four different patterns of china. And a box of silver flatware that we never even opened.
How ever did that happen?
One word: mom.
My mom had opinions about things. One of them it turned out, was that you were really a successful married couple without a set of china to entertain with. This would be true if it was the 1950s and your bible was Sunset magazine, but for Laurie and I in the 1990’s, not really true. We ducked the issue for a couple of years, and then one christmas Mom insisted, so we went down to a department store, picked out a china pattern, and reported back to the boss. The pattern was Kingsbridge by Wedgewood, in case anyone cares.
After that, every christmas for a few years we got a box and inside the box was a setting of china. And every year, Mom took it as an opportunity to remind us that we had (by complete coincidence) picked one of the most expensive patterns in existence. And every year, we would remind mom we didn’t want china and hadn’t asked for it and if she didn’t like the price, to please stop buying it. And mom would give us the look, remind us that successful married couples had china, and we’d some day thank her.
Also, at some point, mom decided we needed christmas china for those special holiday entertaining nights — which, I should note, we spent every christmas in LA at Mom and Dad’s house because the family always gathered for Christmas and that wasn’t optional. So for a while, we also got a serving of christmas china (it was Holly Holiday by Royal). Mom also at some point decided we needed a tea service, and so we have a teapot, cups, saucers and servers from a Polish firm called Korona.
And I have a mystery. I have a fourth pattern, by Royal Sutherland but one I haven’t absolutely identified, and neither Laurie or I remember how it ended up in our house. Nada. No hint or memory whatsoever. But yeah, somehow, we ended up with four different patterns of china, none of which we asked for and never used. And it’s all been hiding in the garage for 15 years because as long as mom was alive, I didn’t feel comfortable doing anything with it.
With mom no longer around and the risk of being asked how we like the china gone, and with this big move and de-clutter prep project going on this year, it is time to move all of this along to a new home. In doing research I had multiple people recommend Replacements, Ltd. So for the last couple of days, I’ve been pulling all of this out, sorting and inspecting, sneezing from 15 year old dust, and prepping it for shipping. It turns out that the flatware isn’t of interest, and neither is the Korona set, so those will get packed up and handed off to Goodwill instead. Once we get a final ID of that fourth pattern and find out if they’ll buy it, we’ll either pack it to ship or pack it for donation as well, but for now, I’ve got two of the patterns wrapped up, at the cost of three boxes, two containers of bubble wrap, a lot of packing foam and one and a half rolls of tape.
My take is we’ll get enough money after paying for shipping and the packing materials to maybe buy a nice dinner. But while I admit being tempted to just send it to the landfill, I felt like this stuff was worth handing off to the future. It’s really nice stuff — just not stuff for us. So I’m happy to find it new homes.
One could argue this was all a big waste of time and money, but to be honest, it was important to mom, and I appreciate that aspect of it.
But I think there’s also an argument that “you’ll thank me some day” is a bad reason to invest as much money as was spent on this. But it made mom happy — even the annual complaint about the cost — so what the hell.
We’ve lived in this house since 1994, and honestly — this process of preparing to move and declutter has me firmly believing that everyone should be forced to move houses every five years, just to force this think-and-purge more often. Good luck with that, of course. But I’m about to drop off the second round of donations, I’ve made one run to the e-waste recyclers, and I have a run to the hazardous drop-off pending next week, and I’m just getting started…
And the move is months away, although finally, I have rough dates vs a “hopefully in 2021” to work to…
