There are some trivialities in life you never know you need until you are introduced to them. It might be visiting someone’s home or business that makes you aware of their practicality. Or it might be something you never needed before, but because of a new undertaking you suddenly realize that life would be better with them. At least, slightly.

I’ve gone my entire life without owning a shoe horn. Koreans call them “shoe scoops”, using the same word for the scoop they get rice from a large bowl to serve it to people. While I find a shoe “horn” nonsensical, the idea of “scooping” my heel is disgusting for some reason. I always attributed them to old people. When I was a child, I outgrew my shoes around the time they were too damaged to wear, so there was no point in keeping my shoes undamaged.

The reason my last shoes wore out was that when I had to take them off and put them on in the house, I’d just wedge my foot in. The shoes have no laces, so the “spine” of the heel of the shoe would break. I would use my finger to help my feet slide into the shoe, but the friction of trying to pull my finger out would leave one finger cracked and dry. My last pair have spines so damaged that they rubbed my ankles, forcing me to buy a new pair.

I got some nice, comfortable leather shoes and wanted to keep them in good condition as long as possible. They cost enough that I’d like to avoid damaging them when I put them on. I was at a restaurant that had a shoe horn. I never saw the point of owning one before, because they were short. If I was going to bend down to put on a shoe, I don’t need another tool. This shoe horn was a nice length, so you could slip on your shoe without bending over. It would also double as a nice weapon to fend off small children. We bought one for the house the next chance we got. I never thought I’d get to be an old man with a shoe horn, but now, here I am.

I’ve never owned a kitchen scale. My mother cooked with measuring cups and whatnot, but most of the time we’d always “eyeball” the amounts. Cook for taste. That sort of thing. Now that my wife has started a cooking school, she needs lots of new cookware gadgets to replicate what she is learning in class. She’s also trying to do more baking, and anything that facilitates peanut butter cookies is okay with me. We now own a nice plastic kitchen scale that will help us with such things.

I’m not going out of my way to fill my house with useless baubles and tchotchkes. Eventually all the useful stuff I swear I need will be discarded. The next time we move in Korea my wife has promised me the use of a moving service. That way we won’t have to move all the useless stuff we end up with ourselves. We’ll be paying someone else to haul our useless crap around.