Why I Oughta...

This past March, I posted a photo of a couple of Tawashi Scrubbing brushes that we bought from the Daiso (dollar store) up in Niles .  We recently went back and I found a couple of different scrubbing brush products that I brought home.  The first one, is what you see at the top of this post: they call it a toilet brush, but if you look at the photos, you'll see that it is designed to clean the Toto toilet washlet .  The other scrubbing product - below - is also for the toilet.  But this one is for the bowl.  They bill it as having 'pumice abrasive'.  With two exclamation points.  I haven't used either of them yet, but you can bet that I'll report back on the outcomes here.  I mean...who isn't sitting on the edge of their (washlet) seat just wondering if these dollar store items are any good?  Gross?  Or the good kind of gross?

A few years ago, I came across and brought home a few Tawaski Scrubbing brushes on a trip to Tokyo.  Here's that post .  On the next few trips that I've been there, I sought out and brought home some 'made in Japan' brushes and we used them and gave them to family.  I really like them, but they don't (at least for us) last long because when food gets stuck in them, it is time to toss.   In Japan, you can find these things in different forms at stores and markets, but quite a few of them are NOT made in Japan.  If you flip the package over, you'll see that they're made in Sri Lanka or somewhere else.  I'm happy to pay $10 or $12 for a real-deal Japanese one.  But those other ones?  Meh.  Especially when I'm not sure how long they'll last before the left-over scrambled eggs that are stuck to the pan infest the brushes.  That was, until, we went to our first US-based Daiso called Hello Tokyo up in Niles .  At Hello Tokyo -...

I found myself in a Japanese hardware store in Ginza and discovered that a lot of the products are just like ours:  made in China.  But, there was a section that had some signage that proclaimed:  Made in Japan.  That's where I spent my time poking around to try to find something small and inexpensive that I could bring home for myself and for my tool-loving family members who had birthdays coming up.  There on the rack were a series of these precision screwdrivers.  Or "micro precision drivers" as I think they were billed.  This Phillips head driver from Vessel has that red padded section that you can use to twist the screw into place while applying pressure to the base.  I have a set of precision drivers, but they're stuck in a case and it always takes me a second to pull them out.  Now I have a driver that I can keep in the coffee mug on my desk at home along with my most-used regular-sized driver and a pair of needle nose pliers....

I came across a garage sale up in Twin Lakes earlier this summer that I was drawn in via a vintage bicycle (that turned out to be a reproduction and was too expensive for me!) and ended up buying this silly coffee mug for $0.25.  It has this husband/wife and a pig on it and just spoke to me for some reason.  It has a comic strip kind of quality to it, but I can't quite place it. Not Frank and Ernest .  Not quite Beetle Bailey .  Kind of like a hillbilly Blondie ? The same mug is on eBay for $19.99 , which seems nuts, right? Oh, did I tell you?  This got a MAJOR eye roll from Nat.   I made the mistake of leaving it in the front seat after I picked it up and she came across it before I could put it away. It has some crazing going on and I have to think it will survive the dishwasher if it still looks like this after 40 or 50 years, so I stuck it in the cupboard in Twin Lakes and I'll use it when I can. One of the big reasons why I bought it? ...

At the Elkhart Antique Flea Market there were so many treasures that it was hard to focus.  It was colder than we thought and we weren't dressed for the wind and weather, so we were hustling around.  I posted about the Schlitz glass pitcher yesterday , but today comes a treasure that is closer to my sweetspot:  vintage Christmas stuff. Above you see Santa and Mrs. Claus on a little bench giving each other a smooch - and it is pretty cute.  They're salt and pepper shakers and this is what I *think* is the first matching pair of vintage Christmas ones we have.  I posted about this "Merry" (without Christmas) one  back in 2014.  And this spaghetti trim Salt shaker (no pepper) in 2015 . This new pair was in a booth that was close to the entrance and I picked them up and liked them right away.  But, it was like the 2nd booth we had visited, so I passed and moved on.  Just like the Schlitz pitcher, since it was on the way out, I stopped by ...

Despite what it seems like based on the posts here, it wasn't all Disney during my time in Tokyo.  Besides the work proper, we also took in a bunch of the local sights and places.  One of them was the Tsukiji Market where we spent time in both parts - the inner market where we wandered around amongst fork lifts and workers and the outer market where they sell more retail items from food to household products.  And that's where I came across this Tawashi Scrubbing Brush.  It is billed as being "made by Traditional Craftsman of Japan" and as you can see, they even list the guy's name:  Shinichi Sagara.  It seemed like a nice, unique item to bring home that wouldn't sit on a shelf, but that we'd actually use. You can find these online like in this Japanese Restaurant supply shop where they describe their own version of the product thusly: This biodegradable, all-natural scrubbing brush has been around in Japanese households for over 100 years and i...

Our middle child picked out this little early wooden horsecart at the Lake Geneva Antique Mall on a trip up there.  I'm not sure exactly how it went down, but I think Nat told the girls that they could pick out something small - a 'treasure' - to reward their patience while we wandered around the place.   Now that they're not in strollers, it is a lot harder to wrangle them at places like antique malls where they don't go crazy. The Bird picked this little wooden horse and cart.  The tag says "Early Japan" and the bottom is stamped directly on the piece, no sticker: Kind of a sweet little treasure, isn't it?  It is super brittle, so I know it won't last long. But, one of the horse legs was busted off already, so it wasn't perfect in the first place. Just like my Dad did to me, we're (I think) doing to our girls:  encouraging them to love old things. The trick, however, is something that I'm not quite *there* with that...