Things you buy once and then make do with for the rest of your life

[Ubiquery]

Cutlery sets. Has anyone ever changed their cutlery set? If so, why and what did you do with the old set. I reckon I will have mine for the rest of my life and never change them.

DP has just chipped another bowl this morning. Most of our crockery set is chipped so I'm toying with breaking them all up for crocking and buying a new one. It'd cost about £25 but feels incredibly wasteful and decadent.

My mum has had the same towels all of my life. None of them match. They are threadbare and patchy. I find it so sad. I wonder why she doesn't just use them all for rags and buy a brand new bale so that they all match and are clean and fluffy.

What things have you bought once and reckon you'll never replace even if you should (my mum's towels) or could (my cutlery set)?

My Dualit toaster is probably 40 years old. I have replaced an individual element twice.

I've changed my cutlery set multiple times over the years. Mainly because with a lot of kids in the house as soon as pieces start to go missing I have to replace them. Couldn't always find something similar to the old set so replace the entire set and keep the old ones as spares for guests. Never had an expensive set, seems pointless considering how easily pieces get lost along the way.

@Theyellowflamingo that's a great idea, do you know if your organisation is national? We have some hardly used duvet sets that I want to donate (thought of Women's Aid but the website is really hard to negotiate so I can't figure out how to contact the organisation local to me).

@beguilingeyes

My mum had a gorgeous canteen of cutlery as a wedding present. Came in a fancy case. It was saved 'for best' and I remember it being used maybe half a dozen times.

I found a canteen clearing my mother's house, beautiful cutlery from royal doulton, of all places. Wh knew they made cutlery in the past? We use them all the time now. Beautiful to use.

Old stuff we rarely replace is duvet covers, we have some that are probably 25 yrs old. Fading fast now but so soft.
Oh and tea towels. They need ragging, really.

I had to buy new cutlery, crockery and kitchenware when I emigrated. It just wasn't practical to take the old stuff with us and it would have cost more to get it shipped than it did to replace it.
I passed all of it on to a younger relative who is still using it. And I bought most of that stuff when I first started university so it's been going for 27 years now. It has been to 4 different universities now!

@Lalallama

Yes I can't imagine ever needing to replace cutlery. Although having said that we bought a set with 12 of everything when we first got married and now we only have 8 knives, but randomly about 20 teaspoons. Where have the knives gone and where did the teaspoons come from?? Will we eventually have to buy new ones when we find ourselves trying to cut up our dinner with teaspoons?

Think you might have my teaspoons.. please post back

Does a jar of nutmeg count? It's older than my son and he's my height now.

My dad's boy scout belt.

My aluminium pan my mum got me from bhs when I left home in 1989.

My favourite jigsaws.

Coffee pot used as vase, from grans house.

Ironing board made of wood. I've replaced the cover a few times.

Angostura bitters. My dad has a bottle dating back to the 60s! DH and I can't figure out how the company stays in business.

We have knives, cutlery and a can opener that we bought when we moved in together….some 25 years ago.

We only replaced ds1’s towels because he went away to university, I wrapped him in those pale blue towels from the day he came home from hospital 19 years ago and I’m guessing he will go back to using them when he comes back for Christmas. No idea what I was thinking buying pale blue🤣

No intention of replacing cutlery, knives or any other kitchen bits. The can opener will definitely see us out, no point in replacing something used so infrequently.

We really do need new carpets, they have been the same since we moved in some 19 and a half years ago and they weren’t great then!

We did buy a new every day cutlery set recently. The old kitchen set was from Woolworths when we were students 20 years ago, but is still in surprisingly food shape so we retired it to our holiday house, along with our older towels, sheets etc.

Crockery - we've a few inherited sets for formal use but we recently retired our every day set for garden use only and replaced with a nice matching set.

I am considering doing the same for tea towels. Ours are all ancient, either given as a gift or inherited from parents and even grandparents, but all quite grotty now. But buying new tea towels feels really extravagant for some reason! Same for new bedlinen.

Buying new stuff feels extravagant when we have perfectly decent stuff, but as we're kitting out another house, psychologically it feels ok to send stuff there, and replace it.

I imagine people replace things more frequently when they move house Yes. We've moved six or seven times (including a couple of foreign postings) and there's nothing like packing up to make you empty all your cupboards and seriously question whether you want to take all that stuff to a new place. I actually think chucking out all the old worn out stuff is as enjoyable as getting new stuff as when you put it all back in the cupboards at the new place you feel like you've only got the stuff you really need and love. That said - wedding gift canteen of cutlery is unbreakable and because of the way it's stored I can instantly see if a piece is missing and hunt it down immediately. Anything threadbare or chipped goes - no matter how much I've loved it (including my Brabantia bin @Geppili when the pedal broke after 20 years).

I've got a pair of plastic salt and pepper shakers that my friend nicked from a motorway service station in 1996 as we were heading out on a camping trip. They live in the kitchen for cooking rather than to go on the table, but I can't imagine replacing them.

I inherited a Viners cutlery set which was originally bought in 1991. By 2013 they were rusting so badly that I had to replace them - chunks were beginning to come off the cerrated edge of almost all of the knives.

I'm very possibly the exception to this. I grew up in a household where little care was given to the 'niceness' of things over their practicality/effectiveness.

I only ever had set of bedding that was always bobbled, our cutlery and crockery was always dinged and chipped, our glasses were mismatched etc.

When we were younger we had odds and ends of everything and now we have the income I like to take pride and care that all my things are 'nice'. DH is the same, it's less about frugality and I think more about the leftover traps of our upbringing.

I replace things regularly whenever they're a little worse for ware. I donated our old set of plates to the charity shop over summer, it started as a full eight set but we were down to five plates, four bowls etc.

I'm waiting for the Gladelig set to come back in stock in IKEA and I couldn't be more excited. It's the little things. They will join my MADE black cutlery set that have been going strong for nearly four years and I'll have a lovely matching table in time for Christmas.

However that being said I'm absolutely anal about our cookware and subsequently it has lasted wonderfully. I started buying odds of Le Creuset in about 2010 whenever it was in TK Maxx and Home Sense and I nearly have the full set.

My family think I burn money but I couldn't give less of a shit if I tried!

The cat carrier does however need replacing. I say it every time we get it out but we always forget. There doesn't appear to be anything wrong with it but we've had it as long as we've had her and I'm always paranoid about the mechanism wearing out.

Cutlery, Singer sewing machine (1920s), enamelled steel Judge hob top kettle, solid stainless steel saucepans (not cheap ones with plastic handles), white enamelled tinware cooking dishes, stoneware mixing bowls (1930s), stainless steel jam pan, cast iron bakestone, wooden clothes pegs.

I wonder why she doesn't just use them all for rags and buy a brand new bale so that they all match and are clean and fluffy.
Fluffy towels are shit, they’re useless until they get a bit of a crunch and actually dry you properly.

How are you all keeping hold of your cutlery? I swear, ours disappears into a black hole, or more likely, DH takes it to work and doesn’t bring it back.
Ours just expands but it’s the opposite I / DP bring it home from work so we have this ever expanding hodgepodge of cutlery, way more forks and spoons than knives though

Colander here. The paint is all chipped off the bottom and the sides but it’s functional, even if it’s about 15 years old.

Cheese grater also. Pans are utterly shit but I can’t see getting new ones any time soon they’re the same age, got them all before uni and they moved in with me and DP after. I need to invest in some quality ones but don’t have the money.

There are clearly two groups of people - teaspoon-acquirers and teaspoon-losers. I'm one of the former. It's truly mysterious where they all come from. If we measure out our lives in coffee spoons, I'm going to live forever.

@Ubiquery
@Clarabellawilliamson

Perhaps your/her mum prefers her old towels?

I have lovely fluffy towels & I hate getting dried with them so I keep them for guests! I far prefer getting dried on the old thin ones!!
(Some of them are newer next beach towel, but NOT the thick or velvety ones)

I have all kinds of things I bought to 'make do' until I finished renovating this place & could buy 'nice' things that went with the new look (etc). Tesco white dining set still going strong 13 years later plus lots of other things like glasses/mugs/cutlery etc my stuff from where I was living overseas, a lot was given to charity, but the rest us just waiting for some additional storage space!

I don't buy 'for now' anymore as once it's in the house, it stays forever! 🤣

@TheyWentToSeaInASieve

What is "crocking" and why do you break up plates for it?

When you plant up clay pots (and sometimes other kinds), a layer of broken crocks in the bottom stops the compost falling out through the large hole and also improves drainage.

@beguilingeyes

My mum had a gorgeous canteen of cutlery as a wedding present. Came in a fancy case. It was saved 'for best' and I remember it being used maybe half a dozen times.

We have one. Also a wedding present and also not used much. I have to admit that the other week I was trying to cut a chop with one of our rather blunt everyday knives and thought that it was time to bring out the steak knives from the canteen and then thought perhaps we should just use it all anyway.

Somehow, this thread is making me think of my husband (acquired decades ago, knackered, should replace but can't be arsed!). But otherwise, my pie funnel (chipped and cheap to replace, but the only thing I have that belonged to my grandmother), my greenhouse (so eye-wateringly expensive that I'll never be able to afford another, bigger one) and my hairdryer (bought 20 years ago, used a couple f times for drying hair and half a dozen times for reviving lambs).

@BonnesVacances

I was just thinking about cutlery only the other day. We've had ours for over 20 years. Teaspoons come and go, where do they go though? But the rest is all as we bought it years ago.

Have you never heard of the huge sock and spoon hole in somewhere or other??

I’m on my third cutlery set - I previously had cheap ones with plastic handles which I would recommend you avoid! The first set eventually all the handles either snapped or came off the actual utensil bit. The second set went all black and manky where the handle joins on. And now I just have normal (old) 100% stainless steel which a family member gave me and none of that has broken!

I’ve also had to get rid of a few kitchen knives which had coloured blades and the colouring started to flake off, and the same for non stick on non stick pans. My approach now is to buy as old fashioned as possible.

Our crockery was also given to us by a family member and I bought a couple of extra pieces online to make a full set.

I still have the towels I bought (cheap bale from Asda) when I went to uni and they are a ragged round the edges but I’m waiting until we do our bathroom to replace them.

I have a cafetiere which I bought in Gibraltar about 47 years ago, it's had a few glass jugs and a new round filter thingy but I still call it 'original'! When we bought it I don't think I'd seen them in the UK, early '70s.
The ironing board was a wedding present, 53 years ago, numerous covers but the bones of it are still very strong and solid.

One of my aunts lived to her 90s, and still had the same saucepan and cutlery sets she'd had as wedding presents. Her daughter still uses them now.

We bought a microwave many years ago and we both hated the thing, it was so unintuitive to use and required many button presses just to get it to heat something up for a minute. But it still functioned as a microwave and we couldn't bring ourselves to replace it so we resentfully kept the thing. Couple of years ago I was out and got a whatsapp from my husband "the microwave has just blown up, FUCKING GET IN" we were delighted to finally get rid of it.

The pedal bin in the kitchen is also many years old, I think we bought it three houses ago. The pedal bit keeps breaking and we manage to fix it but it's really a bit knackered. No budget reasons why we don't replace it, we just don't.