Once upon a time, a woman had many lids. One for each of most of her pots.
And all those lids lived in a tiny corner at the very back of her kitchen cabinet. They clinked and they clunked and they clanked and they scooted farther and farther back as the pots and the pans and colanders left the cabinet again and again, but the lids were left behind.
On a rare day, when broccoli needed steaming or ground beef needed speedier defrosting, those lids were remembered. And then they were shuffled and shoved and moved as the not-that-old woman who lived in the house grunted and bent and reached to find the one she needed.
But because that not-that-old (really, not that old) woman didn’t love the grunting and the reaching, she usually just grabbed one. Whichever one. And decided that whichever one she grabbed first was perfectly fine for whatever she needed to cover.
Because all those lids were mostly the same size. Some domed, some metal and some glass.
But the not-that-old woman didn’t care what they were made of, and finally tired of the grunting and the reaching and decluttered all but one. One that mostly fit all of the pots that needed the mostly-the-same sized lid.
And she was happy. Because just one lid fit nicely in her cabinet, and even though it didn’t fit perfectly on every single pot, it did the job she needed it to do.
The not-that-old-but-old-enough-to-have-accepted-her-own-non-fancy-cooking-style woman knew that with less in her cabinet, less mess would happen, less grunting would be needed, and less hassle would be experienced.
And she liked that.
