I promise you that I am not a hoarder

Indeed, I abhor clutter.

However, I have a couple areas of concern. That is why a box of allegedly important papers awaits my attention. I hang onto these important papers for weeks. Okay, months. Okay! Years! As I told the lady at Big Lots the other day, one never knows when one will need that receipt for Starbursts.

My biggest area of concern – vis-à-vis this topic – is that I have trouble replacing and/or discarding certain items. For example, I wear socks until they sport holes and thin spots that you can read through. Then, when I finally buy new socks, I keep the holey thin socks. Why? No good reason.

Of late, it became apparent that I needed to discard my frying pan. Actually, it wasn’t apparent to me. I blamed user error for the reason all the food I made in that frying pan burned. No. The coating had worn off, so I tossed the frying pan into the trash.

I shopped around for a frying pan and considered splurging on one that costs seven bucks. But my niece recommended another one that costs much more. That made me think that perhaps seven bucks didn’t represent the best use of my funds.

I continued shopping around and found a cookware set that contained three frying pans as well as two saucepans and a casserole pan. (Or as we call them at the Goff Estate – kettles.) Hmm. My kettles have seen better days. The inside of one looks jaundiced. And it would be kind of exciting to have more than one frying pan.

This set was kind of fancy, though, but it was on sale, and I had a coupon. My final cost would be less than half the original price, which I will not share unless you and Stefano Dimera administer a truth serum to me. I consulted the abacus and if I multiplied the cost of the frying pan my niece recommended by three and added in the price of three kettles, well, it would be more than this fancy cookware set. I know a deal when I see one.

So, I placed the order.

The cookware set arrived and, let me tell you, it is splendid. Per the directions, I washed the set in warm soapy water. Then, I cleared out a space in the cabinet for it.

Yeah, I had to clear out a space because I’m keeping the other kettles, including the one with chronic jaundice.

This reminds me of other kettles I held onto. I’m not sure how I came in possession of them. It could have been that someone in my circle was fixing to discard them, and I was like, “Hey, if you don’t want those, may I have them?”

Anyway, my parents subsequently gave me a cookware set for Christmas and the kettles I bummed subsequently rusted. One day, my dad, the late great Burton Goff, spotted a rusty kettle at my house and asked why I was using a kettle is such disrepair.

After I explained to him that I didn’t use it, he asked why I had a kettle in such disrepair.

No good reason.

This post originally appeared in the Appalachian News-Express.

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