Preach Patina

I’m not one to preach, but it is Sunday. Before I get into it, allow me to give a bit of background on today’s sermon.

Furniture patina—we love it on old furniture, it darkens and enriches the color of the wood. It gives it an old-world charm that we love in our homes. It signifies mystery and wonder at the places and people it has seen.

What is patina? It’s decades of lemon furniture polish. It’s smoke residue from a thousand wood and coal stoves on cold nights. It’s insect residue from the hot summer days before there were window screens. It’s a bit of mold and rodent poop from improper storage. All of these believe it or not, I’m ok with. The final one, the one that causes me the most distress, is cigarette smoke.

Many an object I have scrubbed and scrubbed, baked in the sun, laundered through several cycles, only to have the smoke smell return with a vengeance.

Back to my sermon. Attached to this blog are pictures of a set of beautiful Pfaltzgraff Folk Art pattern dishes. I spent most of Sunday scrubbing them with restaurant industrial dish cleaner to save them from the dumpster. The brown is nicotine residue I needed to scrub off with cleaner and a magic eraser. Now my car is stinky, my garage is stinky and I’m stinky. The job is mostly done and someone will go home with a beautiful complete set of dishes for a fantastic price. And saved it from the landfill.

Can I get an AMEN!