We downsized on this move. Less space. Fewer things will fit. I see this as a positive thing. Purging is good. Unless you just ate.
But as my partner and I went through things to make decisions like whose grandmother's china wins, I was reminded of certain customs and traditions that involve "things" that I just don't quite understand.
For instance: chargers. Nope, not the kind you juice up your phone battery with. The kind you put under plates. In fact, they are sometimes called "underplates," but even though they've been around since the 1800s, they make less sense to me than, say, underpants. My chef friends and my Martha Stewart type friends (Michele, Kate) will probably fault me for faulting the charger. I suppose using a charger under a plate would make sense to me if one used only a charger. But I was at a dinner party recently where my dinner plate sat atop a charger, which sat atop a placemat, which sat atop a tablecloth, which sat atop a tablecloth liner, which sat atop the table. My filet was touching the bottom of my chin. This seems downright silly to me. I don't even like to own a table that requires I use a little bitty coaster for my water glass. After all, isn't a table something with legs under a flat surface on which one is served food and drink, or dealt a deck of cards?
Another case in point: floor mats in cars. The floor of a car is something you put your feet on. You get in and out of your car a lot. Why do you need the floor of your car to stay pristine? When other people get in it, do you momentarily remove the mat and say, "Look, look how clean and unworn the floor of my car is under the mats! Now, let me put this skank mat down and you can get in." Mats are also a safety hazard, as accidents are sometimes caused by their getting stuck under one of the foot pedals. This is why I love my matless Honda Element. Go on, root your ratty mudcaked boots around on my car floor! I can clean it just as easily as I could clean a mat.
And that flatware I'm riffling around for? My partner insists it should go in a handy little flatware tray, which separates knives from forks from spoons from our one chopstick. Really? Isn't it enough that it's in a drawer? I recognize the forks because they have tines, not because they're in the left-most section of the tray. The spoon is the thing I'm right-side-up in on one side, and upside-down in on the other. Plus, it stresses me out when there are too many forks to fit in the fork section and so some of the forks have to move in with the knives. I get all OCD when that happens. But if all the flatware is just living communally in the drawer, resting on the bottom of the drawer itself, I relax. (Don't even get me started on contact paper.)
Some types of layering make sense. A three-layer cake, for instance. Because one layer of cream cheese icing is never enough. A down vest over your hoodie on a winter morning. When the sun comes out, you shed a layer. The case I bought for my iPhone, because I have dropped it 720 times and the case has kept it from croaking.
So have me over for dinner, please. Make me a layer cake. But don't serve it on a plate on a charger on a place mat on a table cloth . . . well. You know.
