Myron Kukla: Surviving fancy garage sale dishes

Warning! Do not go to garage sales. Things you buy there can create extra work for you.
Courtesy Myron Kukla Myron Kukla
My wife and I found a set of milk glass plates with gold-trimmed edges at a garage sale.  The dishes were 1950s-era Anchor Hocking in great condition. My wife, Madeline, was floored when the guy only wanted $15 for the whole set. 

We got them home, and I started putting them in the dishwasher for a quick cleanup when I discovered why they were so cheap. 

“Stop,” Madeline said. “You can’t put them in the dishwasher. It will wear off the gold paint.” 

“So, how will we clean them?” I asked. 

“By hand.”

“Whose hand?” I asked suspiciously.

“The hand that has the dishrag,” she said, handing me a dishrag. 

Now, instead of finishing a meal and putting the plates in the dishwasher, we wash them by hand. And not just the plates; the cups and saucers have to be washed by hand, too.

That’s right. We have to use the cups and saucers that came with the set because, well, we have them. I can no longer use my well-loved, chipped mug from IHOP for my morning coffee, but must sip from a gold-trimmed milk glass cup that sits on a gold-trimmed saucer. And then wash them.

Not microwave safe

I also discovered that gold-trimmed plates don’t do well in the microwave. The plates cause the microwave to spark and make Mad Scientist lab noises when being heated.   

I asked how I’m supposed to heat up food now.

“Well, you just put the food on a regular plate, heat it, and then transfer it to a gold-trimmed milk glass dish,” Madeline said. 

“But then I have two things to wash instead of one.” 

“No, you don’t. You wash the good dish by hand, and the regular plate you can put in the dishwasher after you rinse it out thoroughly in the sink.”

“What if I want to reheat some coffee?” 

“You put the coffee in that crummy old mug you have. Heat it in the microwave and then pour the coffee into one of the good cups.” 

“Then I rinse out my mug and put it in the dishwasher?”

“No,” she said. “Then you throw that crummy old, chipped cup in the garbage.” 

So you see, by going to that garage sale and buying those fancy milk glass, gold-trimmed dishes, we now have the convenience of a dishwasher that we can’t use to wash our dishes and a microwave that we can’t use to heat up food. And, I have a lot of extra work on my dishpan hands. 

The only good thing is that my wife went to a garage sale last week and bought a plastic white dish with fake gold trim that matches our Anchor Hocking dishes. It can go in the dishwasher without damage and reheat food in the microwave without burning down the house.

It’s the only thing I will eat out of now. She should have bought me a plastic cup to go with the plate. 

Myron J. Kukla is a Midwest writer and humorist and the author of several books, including Guide to Surviving Life, Confessions of a Baby Boomer, and the newly released Murder at Tulip Time. He is also a former Holland-based reporter for the Lakeshore Press and Grand Rapids Press. He and his family live in Holland, the tulip capital of the world.