Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low 68F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%..

Cloudy skies with periods of rain late. Low 68F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 80%.

I fished a hard metal item the size of a mustard jar lid from the dishwasher and examined it. I didn’t recognize it, but it carried an air of importance.

“Any idea what this is?” I asked my spouse.

He shook his head. “Nope. Better hang on to it.”

In addition to the usual junk drawer crammed with recognizable and useful odds and ends, we have a “better hang on to it” drawer filled with these mystery items. We might be safe throwing these doohickeys away, but why risk it.

However, I immediately ran another load of dirty dishes after the “better hang on to it” broke off, extruded or whatever happened and no problem. It must have been the dishwasher’s appendix.

Some of the “better-hang-on-to-its” are no bigger than Lego bricks. For all I know, they are Lego bricks from a fortress and drawbridge set bought 25 years ago and not vital plastic parts holding our appliances, electronics and lives together.

While most of these oddball keepers are plastic or metal, one thingamajig resembles a smooth wooden toe, possibly from claw-foot furniture. But the only clawed foot I recall from the household was made of cast iron and belonged on a bathtub in our Victorian hovel. Perhaps this is a souvenir buckeye from a long-ago Dayton, Ohio, trip, or a knob from an antique medicine cabinet sold years ago.

The oak toe or whatever it is looks too important to toss, however, so we better hang on to it.

And not long ago, an unfamiliar house key, along with a stick of petrified Juicy Fruit, tumbled out of a purse I hadn’t carried in years. We couldn’t decide if the key unlocked a former neighbor’s front door or one of our own.

“Better hang on to it,” my spouse said.

Cables and cords from long-dead phones, computers, printers and small appliances greet me every time I open the mystery drawer. After wrestling it for years, I finally pitched the cord that plugged into a Corning Ware percolator that was useless because the lid to the basket was missing.

It felt good to unburden this “better hang on to it.”

But now I’m thinking that metal object that showed up in the dishwasher sure looks like the missing coffeepot lid.

Marti Attoun’s “Booth 186: My Secondhand Career in Vintage Corsets, Moose Heads and Other Moth-Eaten Antiques,” is available as an e-book on Amazon.

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