It started with my nana really. If she hadn’t have given me those two matching brown coffee cups and plates 10 years ago, well, I would never have gone looking.

They were good cups. Solid cups and I liked having my one cup of coffee a day to drink out of it. The amount was perfect, the handle comfortable and the lip was great. Call me Polly Pedantic but I like a good lip on a cup- it makes the drink, I’m sure of it.

So there I was, happy with my two brown cups from Nana. Happy drinking my daily coffee from it, just as my Nana had done before me. When my mum would visit, all she could think of was seeing my Nana drinking her one coffee a day in there, but 50 years beforehand.

Fast forward to the land and time of Instagram, and I had taken a photo of my one cup a day and posted it. Not particularly exciting stuff but there it was non the less.

“Looks like Denby”

“Denby”

“Oooh Denby!”

Say what?? What are you all talking about? My cup has a name? I looked on the bottom *gasp* it does have a name. I confer with my friend google *double gasp,* it is! It was. There stamped before me was Denby, and it seemed it’s rather a collectors thing. Looks like I could find more in the set if I was willing to sell a small child as well.

Two instagramer friends showed me the insides of their own parents Denby-ed kitchen cupboards. My knees felt a little weak…it looked so good. My cupboards too could look just as good, if I had a sack full of money and was ready to scour the earth for single pieces of Denby to create a collection.

Was I willing to do that?

Yes. Yes, it seems I was. Months later I found myself clicking pay now on ebay where I had found three exact matches to go with my other two cups. I quietly justified it by having sold a whole lot of unneeded/unloved items on gumtree the week before. About 20 things of mine had moved out to other peoples households and three sleek brown sixty year old coffee cups moved in to mine.

Decluttering the household AND some lovely bonus kitchen additions. I think my daily cup of coffee tasted particularly good that day.

 *************

Tell me… do you use gumtree or ebay to sell things you no longer want or have a need for?

Do you buy second hand where possible, sometimes or never ever ever in all your days?

And lastly, do you all know Denby and I was really, really slow on the uptake with this one?