Longest period of daily use?

So I pushed back from my desk yesterday and somehow started thinking about my desk chair.

It’s a tilting, swiveling chair on casters, solid wood, that my folks gave me as a gently-used Christmas present in 1972 +/- one year. It’s probably 1910-1930 vintage, and they found it at the local Goodwill store.

I’ve used it almost every day since: book reports in middle school, studying for my BS and later my MD; writing grants until I became reconciled that biomedical research wasn’t financially possible for me; patient chart work nights and weekends; studying for certifying (and recertifying) in three different medical boards until I threw in the towel a few years back; now sitting in it every morning with my morning coffee to read the daily papers online.

So, right at fifty years this Xmas, for a used item from a salvage store.

I’m thinking SP might even approve.

Anyone else?

–sutton
still with his 1995 Toyota, but that’s another story

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There’s no physical object I can think of that I’ve used as long as you’ve used your chair, Sutton. But I have my grandmother’s copies of the Lord of the Rings (and the Little Colonel books, which are entirely problematic), my mother’s copies of Peter Rabbit, Anne of Green Gables, and Little Women, and my own copies of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (also problematic in their own way).

These are not daily use items by any means. But they shaped who I am.

ThyPeace, also has jewelry that came from a whole host of family members. The aunt who raised my grandmother, my mom, the grandmother who raised my dad, my dad, my husband.

I didn’t get engagement or wedding rings because I wear my grandmother’s wedding ring. The (3 tiny) diamonds were originally in her mother’s ring. Nana had them reset in a white gold ring when she got married in the 1920s.

The only time I take it off is when I go to the beach.

…my folks gave me as a gently-used Christmas present in 1972 +/- one year.

Funny that you mention a chair. Nope, can’t match that, but I don’t miss by too much.

I think it was 1979 when I returned from the three month business trip to our new offices that I began sitting in my office chair. It would have been pretty new then, no more than a year or three old. I used it until we moved to a new HQ building will all new everything. We were permitted to buy the old furniture for practically nothing, so I bought my chair and another just like it. I had also acquired a computer table, purchased to my exact specifications, that I had been using for a few years. I bough that too. (Plus a tall horizontal filing cabinet to which I had no connection.)

Since they came home they have been my basic computer work place. I am sitting on my chair (or the duplicate; the other is also in the room), typing on a keyboard that rests on that table.

In the kitchen I have a few things dating back to when I was a kid, but they fail the daily use test. The best I can come up with are a set of knives that I was given - split off from the family’s collection of kitchen stuff - when I moved out in 1976. Cheap QuiKut knives. The first ones we had came in boxes of laundry detergent but these are from later and came with a tank of Shell gas. I still have four, and they get very steady use cutting cheese; it is a rare occasion when the dish washer runs without all of them in there. Google shows me many almost exact matches.

Tools… I have several from my father, but all fail the daily use test.

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Ah, kitchen things!

I have a mixing bowl that was an engagement present for my mother, married in 1947. It was the largest bowl of a set, but I can’t remember ever having seen the smaller bowls. Anyhow, I always use the big yellow-on-the-outside, white-on-the-inside bowl when I’m mixing something special. It reminds me of childhood.

My father took up baking bread late in life. When he died 20 years ago, I took back the apron and matching oven mitt I gave him as a Christmas present shortly agfter he took up baking ~ 10 years before. The mitt died a few years ago, but the apron remains my favorite. I wear it for cooking and doing the dishes. It’s bright yellow with olive green olive leaves and black olives. It reminds me of Daddy.

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Oh, you have a Pyrex primary colors mixing bowl! I grew up with those, have a set of my own (that and many other items have been in regular use for 25 years or so), and have broken a couple of them along the way. So we actually have two of the yellow and two of the red, one blue, and none of the green. Here’s a link so you know what it is, if you should ever need to replace or want to get some more.

https://www.etsy.com/market/pyrex_primary_color

ThyPeace, so many cakes made in the early years… today, so many veggies for roasting!

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Yes, that’s it.

“desk chair.”


We still use my mother’s regular “china” set - large and small plates, saucers (but not the tea
cups), and pudding bowls (though not for pudding and these somewhat less frequently). They
have an English cottage on the plates and several have not quite stood the test of children and
grand-kids. But we still use them as our regular dinner china. And there are some of the “blended”
knives, forks and spoons that have been passed along - actually I think these may have been
my grandmother’s items.
Then we have a platter that was a Jewel T heart design plus several small to mid-sized mixing bowls
that we use - but not daily. A couple cookie jars, metal baking cookie sheets and cake pans that
also do not get daily use but ever month or so - they go back to the 1920s.
Sometimes things are kept until they are no longer recognized or parts are no longer available.
Sometimes you decide to just toss things that are memories that are no longer meaningful.

Howie52
Sometimes new is better.
Sometimes old is better.
But sometimes whatever gets the job done most efficiently will do - at any age.

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Toilet and coffee pot :slight_smile:

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My parents purchased a set of cookware when they got married and I arrived two years later. I have many of the pieces and they are still in use and I love the quality. The set was purchased in 1952 and I wish I could find new round screw-on handles for the top of a couple of lids. I haven’t been able to find anything that fits but I will continue to use the cookware.

Robyn

Are the screws a permanent part of the lid? Or is there a hole? For the hole there are a host of aftermarket replacements. For a threaded stud sticking up from the lid things get more interesting. You are unlikely to find a match, but one can probably be made that will work. If the exact thread can be measured there are a couple of possibilities. One would be to embed a matching nut in a wood handle with epoxy. The other would be to use a tap - probably a “bottoming” tap - to thread a hole in a HARD bit of hardwood.

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I used a solid oak antique office chair just like that for years, too. When I retired, I was able to keep it for a buck! However, a few weeks ago, my wife pointed out an almost-new, comfier, used $175.00 office chair for $9.99 at the local Good will store and we brought it home. Love it.

Vermonter

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