Vintage Kitchenware

My supposedly stainless steel slotted spoon rusts if it sits in the sink overnight.

My colander is so flimsy that it dents if you drop a spoon in it.

The shiny surface of my flatware is wearing off, revealing toxic copper.

My folding steamer basket jams.

My measuring cup chips if placed within an inch of any dishwasher item.

I feel like I'm 22 again, living an ad-hoc life on the cheap with everything jury-rigged and temporary. But now there are no alternatives.

You might decry it all as "Chinese-made crap", but that meme's wrong. China also manufactures our iObjects - to a level of refinement and build quality no American factory could match. Same for your fancy TV. The problem isn't crappy Chinese manufacturing, it's cheap American consumers demanding ultra-cheap essentially disposable crap. That market is so dominant that higher-quality operations can't compete. Few of us will pay an extra dime for quality.

If only I'd intercepted my mom before she'd thrown out all her housewares prior to moving to an assisted place. Her measuring cup, her slotted spoon, her steamer baskets and silverware and colander had performed for decades. I remember them like a dream of my more grown-up era before backtracking to my flimsy life as a 22-year-old. A more substantial, less aggravating existence - my gentile upbringing on a Viennese estate where the kitchen staff (Jakob and Sophie and dear old Magdalena) labored with weighty, substantial spatulas. Having fallen on hard times, I obsess endlessly in my quest for a proper potato masher.

Next best thing: I intercept other moms. I head to eBay and insert the search term "vintage" along with the item. Zillions of households are selling this stuff. There's a premium, but I'm happy to pay 1.5 - 2x the going rate. Like the 1945 Buicks still going strong in Havana, the good stuff will last forever. It never dawned on me that my Mom's Ekco slotted spoon was a potential heirloom.


I don't mind the additional expense because it doesn't add up to much overall. Thankfully, I'm not a "lovely coffee table person" (LCTP), my shorthand for people who need to establish for themselves and others that they're cultivated "nice" people who "have nice things". This preoccupation gets very expensive, and becomes a mindspace-dominating neurosis. I lack the LCTP gene, so none of this is a question of status. I just want stuff to work.


Clarification: I'm not saying you must not have a nice coffee table. I'm not calling you decadent bourgeoise for owning anything decorative or lovely. It's the compulsion that you have to. LCTP are people for whom everything must be perfectly lovely and decorative. They feel they're living on stage, and anything cheap-seeming or not perfectly matched makes them tremble with unease, like they're revealing fractures in their desperately glossed image.

I frequently note in this Slog that we're not living in a movie; that it's a horrible mistake to neurotically pull back the camera to view one's own life as if it were some cinematic narrative (that's what Narcissus was about, IMO, though the Greeks, lacking film cameras, were forced to use a less precise metaphor). This impulse is the source of all unhappiness, and the extreme version is seen in the LCTP person. If you happen to own a nice chair - or even a nice coffee table, whatever - god bless and enjoy. Me? I own a jacket.