When a salad spinner barely spins anymore, itās probably time to get a new one. Thatās the situation in my house right now. Like a car that has a flat tire, my salad spinner sputters and makes an awful clicking sound as the lettuce goes round and round. That noise is my salad spinner crying out to me for help. My salad spinner wants to be put down.
But I tend to hold on to things. In the case of my salad spinner, Iām holding on to memories.
But wait. If you think this is going to turn into a weepy essay about my grandmother who came to America with only a salad spinner in hand, you are wrong on many levels. I know nothing about the history of my salad spinner. All I know is that it was once owned by my mother and now itās owned by me. And that is apparently all I need to know to form an unreasonable attachment to a kitchen tool that no longer works.
Iām probably not the only person who is holding on to a 70s-era salad spinner, and Iām certainly not the only person who has kitchenware that is being kept around for sentimental reasons. And while Iām not here to tell you to throw away your grandmotherās molinillo or your dadās Argentinian toaster, I am going to suggest, lightly, that if the sentimental items in our kitchens are no longer effective (or attractive), maybe itās timeātime to get real about the stuff that is cluttering our drawers, time to move on and replace the broken stuff with stuff that works.
Thatās easy to say and hard to do. Iāve put off writing this article for months, because I canāt imagine throwing away something that my mother used for decades, and that has served me for decades, too. But this is ridiculous logic. My salad spinner barely works. My salad spinner is a tint of yellow that hasnāt been seen since 1978. The plastic bowl of my salad spinner is so cloudy you canāt see whether the bowl is empty or full.
The other day I used a friendās salad spinner, and I was shocked by how easy, fast, and effective a salad spinner can be. Thatās when I decided that enough is enough: Iām going to buy a sleek, modern OXO salad spinner of my own. But before I did that, I wanted to call my mother and tell her that I was moving on. The conversation went like this:
āMom, remember that yellow salad spinner?
āOh my heavens.ā
āI still have it.ā
āThat was a wedding gift.ā (Note: my parents got married in 1977.)
āIāve been holding on to it for sentimental reasons.ā
(Silence for a minute.)
āDavid, salad spinners arenāt that expensive.ā
āI know, butāā
āI think itās had its life, sweetie.ā
āWell, I donāt know, I think it couldāā
āDavid, you need to do what that woman on TV says. Pick it up and say āthanks for the wonderful saladsā then put it in a landfill.ā
āA landfill.ā
āThatās the only place itās going to go, you canāt give that thing away now.ā
āRight...okay...ā
āI mean, I gave that thing to you because I found a better one.ā
