How many hammers do you need?

I was shocked to discover last year that we owned five count 'em five hammers: One that I inherited from my father, one my husband inherited from his, one that we bought when we were first married, and two that came from Lord knows where. Five. So how many to keep? As we had a garage on the lower level, it made perfect sense to keep two hammers so one could live in the kitchen and the other in the garage. God forbid we take the stairs to go get a hammer. 

So I kept the two father hammers because they made better quality things back in the day plus they have dad memories all over them. I packed up the rest to Restore and felt really good about myself. Within a week one of the hammers broke (my dad's). We tried to fix it but couldn't.

Not wanting to mention to my husband that we had no extra hammers even though a week earlier we had five, count 'em five, I begged one from a neighbor who had all kinds of extra hammers and of course she said yes.

You might think the moral of this story is to not get rid of extra things, but it isn't. Not in the least. Of the 30,000-some things I have gotten rid of in my lifetime, I've only regretted a couple. No. The moral is that if you do regret getting rid of something, chances are super duper good that you will be able to get another one. 

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