Me old China!

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I am sentimental about the strangest things, old toys from cereal packs I’ve had for years, purses from my childhood, my Nans old seeing glasses and cups! I am by no means a hoarder and I’m rather fond of ebaying and periodically getting a bin bag out and recycling old goods, but sometimes the strangest things hold many memories.

The cereal packet toy is Puss from Shrek and reminds me of my beloved kitty Roy, the childhood purse, a reminder of wearing it proudly when I was five, Nans glasses because they were such a part of her. Nan was five foot nothing, had a little head and always had these huge glasses on which dominated her face, so when she passed away it felt like a natural reminder. The cups, five of them, bone china, floral and polka dot from Cath Kidston that I shared with a dear friend when I lived with her a short while, before going off travelling and meeting Mr Egg.

The cups were originally purchased as a six, long before I lived with my friend, they were pretty, girly and perfect for a cup of tea and a slice of fruit bread, so many happy memories of those cups and our long long chats. When I moved in with Mr Egg, my friend gave them to me, as we didn’t have a lot of stuff and she knew how much I loved them. Well those old cups are still in use today, although there are only 4 of the originals now. I look at them every now and again, and think I would like to replace them with something less stained, more modern and more to my current taste, but I can’t bring myself to ditch them or more to the point I haven’t found anything to replace them. Sure I have supplemented them, there were the Polka dot Spode mugs my mum bought us, lovely but too big, the neon orange blossom mugs to match my orange Bodum kettle (which was returned faulty this week less than a year after purchase) and various ‘novelty cups’ if your one of my family or friends reading this, I erm really really hate novelty cups, I’m not sure my work desk will be able to support the weight of another cup, since that’s where they end up, sorry!

So looking at the cups once again this morning, I remembered a really handy tip I once read about for cleaning tarnished cups…bleach! If your going to try this tip, use your common sense, unlike me the first time I cleaned up my cups!

1. A couple of drops of thick bleach in the bottom off each cup. Preferably multiple purpose, not toilet bleach, or you will have pine tasting tea for days after…

2. Swill the bleach over the ugliest stains

3. Fill the cups up with water and leave to soak for a hour.

4. Et Voila! Shiny new cups. Oh yes, and don’t forget to thoroughly wash them after for safety reasons!

Just to point out, my cups get stained very quickly, I don’t usually let them get this skanky!

So, what random old things do you hold onto that you can’t /won’t replace?