Good is Now

Or good is here! I am trying to stop saving everything that is nice in my house for "good", whatever that is. I have things Mama saved that have never been used. It is time to use them for me. Good is now and it is for me! The time is right to stop using paper cups and paper plates and start using some of the pretty things that are squirreled away before they end up in the second-hand store becoming someone else's treasures.

I will find and use cloth napkins again and cloth handkerchiefs as well, even if it means that I will also have to find the iron again and a way to set up to iron. Now is a good time to celebrate every day--even if it is just a tiny slip of a celebration.

My neighbor's pretty green dishes (given away through our neighborhood email list) are the start of this. It has been a pleasure to eat off of plates again instead of styrofoam and not to have my kitchen garbage sack fill up so fast. I think that eating off disposable plates started in the eighties, a combination of busyness and Papa's desire to save work for me as well as a desire to save water. (I do recall a serious drought in the eighties, but not exactly which year.) Last week I realized that if I would use my daily coffee mug for my nightly cup of milk and then wash it I could have a clean coffee mug every day instead of drinking muck and wondering why the coffee was so awful and not buy paper cups any more. Wow! Where has my brain been!

Of course it uses water and dish detergent and time and energy (mine) to wash these things but it probably isn't as expensive as throwing away the disposables. We will see how this goes.

I can say that it is far more aesthetically pleasing to drink my milk from a china mug--especially if it has one of my own designs on it--and to eat off the new plates. Perhaps this will lead to a lighter mood and a bit less depression. I hope and I am grateful.