How old is your cheese grater?

[FurForksSake]

Mine is 18 years old. I won’t replace it until I don’t know when, but it made me think about how old some of my kitchen stuff is. My knives are 25 years old, I had them as an 18th birthday present and I still use them daily.

I remember clearly being horrified at how old some of the things my mother had when I was growing up, and now I am that person!

My sieves are quite new, they seem to develop holes where they shouldn’t have holes. But my colander (oxo) is also well in to double digits.

@snowone buy one get one free? 😆

I’ve replaced a couple of things over the years and kept the thing I’m replacing and reverted.

we’ve gone through more frying pans than I can count. I might ask for a really good stainless steel lidded sautee for Christmas. Our best frying pans currently are ninja ones that look unused.

I know it's not treacle but I'm sure they found honey in some Egyptian pyramids, ate it and it was delicious. Isn't salt over a million years old as well?

Salt is very, very old. But has a bbe date of 12 months time, good job they dug it up in time 😆

Every time I see this thread title on Notifications, my brain responds with "How Green was your Valley?"

I'm hoping that by writing this down this [earworm??? What do you call it when it's a response and not a tune?] disappears.

Yes. I know that I'm weird.

We are all weird @WearyAuldWumman I hope your earworm has died like a worm in a bottle of tequila.

DBro had a thing about our mother’s black steel ACME (like the Road Runner cartoon gadgets) cheese grater. He’d go looking for it in the drawer whenever he visited. I’m sure it was from the 30s.

Mine are about 15yo (bought 2 because they had straight and crinkle slicers on the side) and my micro plane is 8+ yo. Practically brand new!

I only have those rectangular box graters that go all bendy after a couple of years when the handle breaks.

Hmmm... I bought my cheese grater when I first moved out... Perhaps 18 years old? Most of my cutlery is the same age, but I recently did buy some more, as I never had quite enough.
My dinner plates are ancient though! They used to be my maternal grandparents "special occasion" plates. :D Easily 60 years old and still going strong. They're Wedgewood, so decent quality and made to last. I think my grandparents, who both died when I was a child, would get a kick out of seeing them used every day.

The cheese grater originally belonged to PiL and is at least 50 years old. I did try to replace it about a decade ago with a new one which looks smarter but isn't as effective - so we all prefer using the faithful ancient version.

There's also an even older vegetable steamer that belonged to DH's gran. It's pretty battered but still somehow manages to out perform our new one.

I was thinking this last week: I bought my cheese grater when I first left home and went to university. That was 46 years ago! I even remember where I bought it - the army surplus store. It’s still going strong, absolutely nothing wrong with it.

I wonder if we knew how long some of these things would last, whether we’d have made different choices. A more expensive version or a different style perhaps.

My ironing board is 43.

My grater is older than my relationship of 27 years. My knives are over 23 years as we bought them in our flat. Still going strong.

My iron and ironing board will live forever due to lack of use. I use hair straighteners for attaching labels, don’t even get the iron out for that. I am slovenly with laundry, in fact, i am not even the laundress in my household, i have my own laundyman and he isn’t ironing any time soon.

Although my 70 year old box grater is going strong, I had to replace the Lancashire peeler I saved up to buy (1/6 I think) when I was about 10, expected to peel potatoes, and finding it really hard. I'd used a peeler in someone else's house and even though my father insisted a sharp knife was all that was needed I staged a one-child revolution and bought the kit I wanted.

Who expects a rather clumsy child to use a sharp knife when there's something safer (and more efficient) available? I don't normally think of my dear old dad (RIP) as a monster, just a bit autistic, but honestly.

Anyway, eventually the blade wore through. As sharp as ever, just eroded away by spuds.

It might have been 3/6 but that was a lot of money back then.

My ironing board is 41 years old and a bread knife is 62 years old, a parents wedding gift, I don't use it as it's as blunt as !

You can sharpen a bread knife by using sandpaper wrapped around a pencil and going down each serration a few times.

Mine was bought for me to take to uni (from Woolworths!) in 1998. It's probably time for an upgrade to be honest.

My cheese grater is from my late mum. It was a wedding present in 1959.

I have a Pyrex casserole bought with green shield stamps in the late 60s.. still used weekly

Only about a year. But the one it replaced came into the household with DH 30 years ago. Its little handle finally detached.

I love vintage kitchenware as it's such good quality. Last year I bought a set of 10 1960s Prestige utensils, mainly for the spud masher, but actually every one was better than the flimsy modern version.

My grater is about 15 years old and I need to replace it because the handle has broken and it annoys me.

My bread knife was given to me by a chef in 1990, though, and is the best knife I have ever used. It was an antique when he gave it to me.

I saw a video on social media of a reclaim place near Bicester that has a dangerous amount of vintage kitchen chopping boards and in wondering what else. I might make a feature wall of vintage kitchen gadgets..

I can’t remember a time I didn’t have my cheese grater . It must be over 40. They don’t wear out…

my cheese grater is the one I got for Uni.... 25 years old.

I expect my Grandmothers box grater must at least 70, likely to be 73 (when she got married), assuming its the same one from when she got married..... it could have even come from one of my Great Grandparents (my Great Grandmother was a cook and gave her lots of things) so it might be nearer 100?