New Year Changes

 Like everyone else, I want to put most of 2020 behind me.  Half of my year's to-dos and goals went unmet.  I did better than expected on seeing movies because I counted any streamed films that I would have spent money on in a theater, had that been an option.  Still, most of the items on the list are about getting out and having experiences, which I couldn't really do after March 19th.

First thing on next year's list is getting vaccinated as soon as I'm eligible.  That might not be until April, but I plan to keep trying.  Only slightly lower on the list will be having the garage sale I didn't feel comfortable having when strangers became disease vectors.

I'm going through closets and cabinets again, seeing what I can add to the garage sale pile.  I'm organizing and putting things in better locations.  And I've decided to go down to one set of everyday dishes.

I don't keep kosher, but I have two sets of everyday dishes and two sets of china.  Granted, the blue and gold china is from Target and mainly used for Chanukah.  There's also a small Lenox tea set of my mom's that's going to go into the garage sale pile so I can build a set of the Royal Albert that I've wanted since the 80s. Ebay is going to love me for a couple of years.

I'm giving up the familiar fruit plates and switching to the plain white ones because there are two more in the set.  Seriously, that's the primary reason.  I only run the dishwasher when I run out of space in it, and generally go through all of the 8-setting gingham fruit plates before that.  Plus, one of the dinner plates is slightly broken, so I really only have seven of those when the rim piece is being glued back on for the umpteenth time.  Keeping an extra set of broken and chipped plates is a step below hoarding, even if they're in constant use.  I don't want to end up like my mom, with over ten sets of dishes.  Not kidding.

Food presentation for the blog will also look better on the white dishes.  I tend to plate for photos on one of the china sets if it will look better, but I usually just use whatever I'm planning to eat it off of.  The glassware in the earliest days of the blog was terrible for photos, but it's what I had.  White is generally what food stylists use.

We'll see if I change my mind.  It's a few months to the garage sale.  Maybe Melody Smurf wants me to save them for her, when she someday goes back to college.  The dishes will find a home eventually.