Bring on the chickens

If you are like me and have been married for more than, oh, let’s say 15 or 20 years, then you may need new stuff.   A few years ago I replaced all my towels.  My old towels went in to the rag basket, making hubs a happy man and my new towels, purchased one or two a pay period over a few weeks, went in to the linen closet.  This made me happy.  I also replaced a set or two of sheets,  when they were on sale and when the color was right.  I even bought extra sheet sets! Since the kids were all grown up and out, I even had a guest room. 

My towels are okay as I have since remodeled bathrooms and have a few newer towels and the sheets are holding up just fine.   But, my appliances.  Goodness.  Replaced when the kids were in high school, they are not doing so well.  I have duct tape on the bottom of my microwave door, a broken handle on the fridge and last week an oven knob tumbled to the ground and rolled around my feet.  

That brings me to the television.  A few years ago we purchased, along with dining room furniture and our bedroom furniture, a beautiful oak entertainment cabinet for our modest television.  This again was purchased after saving, planning for it,  and while the kids were in high school...so 10 or 12 years ago.  We’d like a new television, a flat screen to mount on the wall, which would save quite a bit of space in our small living room.  But, what about this beautiful oak cabinet? It’s too deep for the flat screen, too deep for a blanket cabinet, can’t be converted to a china cabinet...but, it can’t be worthless, can it? 

It’s a dinosaur and on one hand, it’s holding me back.  On the other hand, its beautiful, solid, oak and matches all my other furniture.  I’ve talked to the amish furniture makers, where I purchased it, and they said it would cost as much to repurpose the wood as to buy another, more modern and appropriate cabinet for today’s technology.  But besides that, they weren’t really interested in the wood.  

Then I realized that this is how it happens.  This is how things become the antiques of the future.  Have you ever wondered why people in the past put dining room cabinets out in the barn, or out back or even used as firewood?  Why the victrola was in the chicken coop?  I guess I am going to have to get some chickens, so this entertainment center will have a useful life.