How Many Plates Does One Household Need?

"Two of us and forty-two plates," he said.

By Neil Solomon · 2 min read

Picture a couple named Ginny and Walt, both 68. They are packing for a move to a coastal town in Portugal, and the kitchen is the last room. Ginny opened the cupboard and counted. There were 42 dinner plates in four sets. One set came from their wedding, one from Walt's mother, one from a yard sale in 1994, and one from the year they hosted Thanksgiving for fourteen.

Walt held up a stack. "Two of us and forty-two plates," he said. Ginny laughed, and then she asked a better question. How many do we use?

They wrote it down for a week. Every night they washed the same four plates and put them back on the same shelf. The other 38 sat behind them, as they had for years.

Walt's first thought was the dealer in town. Dealers and buy-back stores often pay a small share of what a household item cost new, somewhere between 5% and 20%. A set that cost US$200 new might bring US$10 to US$40.

Then Ginny remembered the community center two streets over, which serves a Thursday supper and is often short of plates. She wrapped the 32 in tea towels and carried them there in two boxes. Noah, the cook, 41, lifted one out.

"Do these have a story?" he asked.

"Thirty years of Christmas dinners," Ginny said. "Now they are yours."

She walked home with two empty boxes. On their last Thursday in town, she and Walt went to the supper, and Walt ate his soup off the plate from his mother's set.