Customs clutter

At the house I grew up in, every day had a fixed rhythm that revolved around eating. Breakfst, lunch, as the day´s main meal, with some kind of dessert as a follow-up, afternoon coffee with some cake or cookies, dinner which meant bread, cheese, sausages, and the occasional salad. Like clockwork, these were eaten daily, always at the same time, and, of course, with the prerequisite utensils.
Breakfast meant egg cups and a salt shaker, plus, for the coffee, a sugar-bowl and creamer set to match the china being used. Dessert meant a set of glass bowls to serve the desserts in. Coffee time meant another sugar-bowl-and-creamer set, plus a cake plate, and dinner time meant yet another set of dishes, plus- you guessed it- another sugar bowl.
Can you tell there was more than one perfectionist roaming that house?
When I started buying my own china and glassware, it felt quite natural to me that the sets had to be complete, meaning they had to contain those sugar bowls and creamers, too.
For those china sets that did not come with their own ones, I bought some stainless steel sets.
In the end, I had about ten sets in total, plus another that DH brought into the household.
I was, thus, well-equipped for any coffee table or dinner table to be set in a visitor-worthy fashion.
But-
we never have visitors. At all.
And while I use milk in my coffee, neither of us ever uses real sugar. And for the milk, I prefer using one of the neutral containers that closes tightly and saves having to fill, refill and clean up several different creamers a day.
Which leaves those pretty creamers that match my china, largely unused, and the sugar bowls completely so.
Most of them, by now, live in the cellar, to the exception of some that are doing duty as little vases.
Now I don´t think that our coffee table, should I choose to set one, is any less civilized than what I grew up with. It´s just that we don´t need to keep things on hand because custom says  we should have them. If we never use them, they are clutter.
Have you ever gone on ebay to look for replacement pieces for a china set? I did recently, and what surprised me most about what was offered there was the sheer number of...egg cups and sugar bowls. Ordinary plates or cups were a lot more rarely offered, which has led me to conclude that I am, obviously, not the only one who owns an unused stash of egg cups and sugar bowls.
And I am certain that there is plenty  of that kind of clutter in other households, too, the kind that is created by wanting to have all of the paraphernalia to recreate the customs of our childhoods, even though our lifestyles, today, are radically different.
Another place I can see that is the linen closet. My grandmother owned plenty of real linen sheets and pillowcases, which were ironed, folded up, and lined up nicely in her immaculate linen closet (she stopped short of tying ribbons around them, however). Using them meant having to re-iron and re-fold them, which meant having to employ a laundry service because you had to use an ironing machine, because a hand-held iron simply wouldn´t straighten the fiber enough.
Some of those linens have ended up in my household. The only thing I ever used one of them for was to cover up furniture when painting the ceiling. Otherwise, they are simply too impractical to use. I very much prefer my jersey fitted sheets, thank you, that I can, after laudering them, roll up and put into a zippered container, which will of course never look as great as my grandma´s linen closet in all its glory, but it works for me and my lifestyle.
So, the most important thing to declutter in that context is expectations and outdated customs. Our lives are, and will continue to be, radically different from those of, say, our grandparents. Keeping the paraphernalia for long-outdated customs around even though we will never use them is just cluttering up our living space- and our vision of what we want our lives to be like.



Julia