Secondary Tools

Apparently there is a fine line when selling a house, between the interior seeming vacant and barren, and it being filled with the stuff of everyday life. Right now, we’re not exactly packing. But we’re thinning out the material possessions contained in our home.

A lot of it is being given away to friends, family, and charitable organizations. As little as possible will get thrown away. Some will be packed for the move to Michigan. And the rest will stay snugly in place to highlight certain features of each room.

It’s an interesting process.

One picture remains above the fireplace, so prospective buyers can envision their own knickknacks on the mantle. Bookshelves are being pared down, so it seems there is plenty of space to store a larger home library. The coat closet will be emptied of most coats and other stored objects, with a few token items remaining just for show. Nonessential furniture is being removed to make the rooms feel as large as they can be.

I get it. On one hand, it’s a fun game. On the other hand, selling a house is no fun. Which is why I’m glad we’ve enlisted some local experts to help.

But right now, I want to talk about the kitchen.

Perhaps you remember we installed a piece of pegboard to hold the pots and pans that are in everyday rotation. Those beauties are staying put. It’s now one of my favorite features of this house. The microwave gets to stay too. Sigh. But I’d bet dollars to donuts that the next owners will install a microwave above the range. That kills me just a little bit.

Really, the question is about what gets packed up early and whisked out of kitchen stadium.

Sorry, burr coffee grinder. Your days are numbered. I’m going to bring this favorite play pretty to Michigan for sure. But while it holds a coveted spot on the actual counter, I barely use this device these days. I’ve largely given up on making good coffee at home, and opt to buy it out at one of our great coffee shops that specialize in pourovers. Because even when I buy small quantities of beans, they tend to linger far too long past their useful life.

You know, maybe I should reconsider moving it to another state. I may just be done with the home pourover, full stop.

What’s definitely coming with me is my grandfather’s milkshake blender. Sure, now it’s more of a mango lassi machine. But every now and again we use it for ice cream. Although, I should note, we still haven’t used it to make a chocolate malt. Regardless, it’s going in a box. We’ll pack it up early and make some more room on the counter.

There was the question of the OXO salad spinner. That oddly expensive piece of plastic has been cracked for years. It’s still functional, but do you move something broken to another state? Since we’re not part of the Roxbury CSA this year, it’s not like we’ll be getting a lot of salad greens. Maybe it’s just time to let it go.

Mrs. Fussy came across an interesting factoid recently. She reported that there are young people who don’t know the difference between butter knives and dinner knives. In this house, we also keep a set a steak knives. And we use those sharp implements at the Friday night dinner table to eat our roast chicken. But I wonder if dinner knives would be sufficient. If that were the case, we could sneak the steak knives into a box bound for Ann Arbor.

Next to the stove I also keep three different jars of tools. In one are the wooden tools. In the other are the metal tools. In the third are all the spoons and ladles. I bet we can thin out the contents of those vessels so they look neater and less jam packed.

While I rarely use the Dualit analog scale, that’s staying put. It’s just a beautiful piece of design that also doubles as a fruit basket.

That said, I think I’m done with at least some of my beautiful glasses. The fancy beer glasses I lost patience with a long time ago. But I think we’re ready to hone our wine glass collection down a lot. We do have some family crystal cocktail glasses that I still adore. And there’s the set of cordial glasses that I’m not prepared to part with. However, Mrs. Fussy will be relieved to learn that I don’t plan to move all of our half-gallon glass storage jars.

If anyone needs a Turkish coffee maker, I’m totally giving up the ibrik. But even though it’s been over a year since I made a pot of Cuban coffee, I can’t divest myself of the Bialetti. Although it probably will get packed before we show the house.

These are hard decisions, but in the end, it’s going to feel good to have simplified our lives and rid ourselves of the collected stuff we’ve accumulated over the years. I’m just nervous to check out what’s still in the attic. But that’s for another day.