After 13 Years, I Clean

Nutty with quarantine I cleaned a shelf I'd covered with newspaper back in 2007. Hadn't cleaned it since. It's a closet for canned goods, nobody sees it, and a bottle of balsamic vinegar exploded in there four or five summers ago, so I was extra reluctant but cleaned it, one shelf took 30 minutes, and laid down a sheet of 2020 newspaper as a reminder to clean that shelf again in 2033. A few days ago I manned up and organized the junk drawer. 

 

To my delight it yielded an end cap for a chair leg, five kinds of tape (scotch, masking, electrical, strapping tape, pink barrier tape), numerous craft sticks, two partly-burnt sage bundles, twine, red gift ribbon, 13 keys and various scraps of velcro I will surely need after I throw them away, and an NOAA weather radio, a transistor, useful until I moved out here, too far from a tower to catch a signal. The water-purification tablets got transferred to the camping-gear drawer. NOAA now broadcasts through an app. Packaged hardware for an office chair, long since given away, I had labeled and dated: again, 2007. Rather than tossing it I kept it. Who knows when I'll need it? That's what a junk drawer is for: contingencies. This is the "after" picture.

Pan Dowdy

My pots and pans hang above the stove and this is so convenient I forget that they are on display although rather the worse for years of wear. Stymied for something to do because my satellite Internet is so bad, my biker bro-in-law on a visit about a year ago asked me if I had any of those copper-colored curly-scrubby-scouring pads. I said no, why. He said he wanted to clean my pans for me.

 

I had long before ceased to be conscious of the state of dishware and cookware 10 to 20 years old. That it functioned was all I cared about. But after the visit I reproached myself and bought copper-colored scourers. It took half an hour to shine up just the interior of one small "stainless" skillet, using first soaking and dish liquid, then baking soda, then vinegar fizzing the baking soda, meanwhile scrubbing until the copper scrubby was in shreds. Then several rounds in the dishwasher. All this did not vanquish the brownish varnish, but it did make the pizza pan peel.

I settled for 50 percent improvement. Then on another day I began lapidary work on the pan's exterior, but soon lost heart.

One day this summer I bought new dishes and bowls and felt like a bride. But I forgot about the dowdy pans until today. Not an hour later I ordered a new nonstick pizza pan, small skillet, and omelet pan. Please see the photo, which I display as art, hoping you might validate my inkling that buying new was a good and reasonable thing to do.