Protect your tools

Steve asked in the comments at the Daily Pundit


Does anyone have advice for sharing a kitchen with someone who doesn't treat your cooking utensils properly? My wife, though she makes good food, tends to trash the equipment. I've put my knives on a high shelf and threatened her with unspecified horrors if she touches them (one chef's knife was used to trim brush in the back yard), but can't do much about the bigger stuff. The worst aggravation was the scouring of all my cast-iron cookware, because that shellacky coating can't be healthy, you know. (Do you know how long it takes to get the smell of Comet out of freshly-scrubbed cast iron? You don't want to know. Removing the smell involved power tools.) I've given up on wood cutting boards, after two or three multi-piece boards were left in the sink to soak, and mysteriously developed bends and separations between the pieces.

Don't get me wrong, I love my wife dearly. But I can't figure out how to have any good cooking gear with her around. Any suggestions not involving deportation are welcome.

Obviously , there is a failure to communicate. Steve's wife just doesn't understand, at a deep emotional level, just how valuable his cooking tools are to him.

One quick thought would be to treat some of her prized possesions in a similar cavalier method. Say using one of here favorite dry-clean only dress to wash the truck