I have 40 plus years of crap.  I’m not talking about my husband or the relationship, but the amount of stuff we’ve accumulated over our marriage.  This June we will be married 44 years and the house is beginning to look like it.  We’ve owned only two homes in our life together and moved a total of four times.  You should move more often than that – I think it should be a requirement to move at least every ten years to get rid of excess baggage.

I am helping a niece with her wedding this fall and offered to let her use the brass in the picture IF, and it was a big IF, I could clean it up and get rid of 40 years of tarnish.  It actually worked!  Who knew that the small threat of not being able to use the brass would get me in gear and polishing.

I sent the niece a picture of the newly gleaming brass and my sister wanted to know where that came from.  She had seen it a million times on my mantel.  I called it antique metal (patina has a nice ring to it).  “Let’s see,” I said.  “Two candlesticks and the cups I rescued from your trash can when you moved and said you didn’t have room for it.  I THINK the bowl came from the florist with a centerpiece from Mom and Dad’s 50^th wedding anniversary, and the rest I bought from an estate sale.”  No, I’m not a hoarder.  I’m a collector (and obviously not a polisher).

The good news is the brass will grace the food table at the wedding.  The better news is that they FINALLY were polished after all these years.  Maybe they weren’t crap after all.