Cake plate, $5

I forgot about the existence of cake plates for a long time. I've never owned one so I just got used to taking larger home-baked cakes to the table on oven trays. But there comes a time in a woman's life when serving cakes on oven trays starts to feel a bit juvenile; like continuing to refer to your other half as your boyfriend even though you have children together. I'm still guilty of the latter half the time, as I find the term "partner" rather cagey and unromantic, but at least I have a cake plate now.

Salt and Pepper Shakers, $1

The great allure of shopping is the idea that an object can change your life. A new dress just might transform you for the evening. A new set of folders just might turn you into the inspired worker you always knew you could be. A new buffet with deep drawers just might be the ticket out of the cluttered mess your house is always in. I do not doubt that an object can change your life, though perhaps not usually in such grand ways. I recently bought a second cruet set. I’d always made do with one, but was forever having to get up in the middle of dinner to fetch the salt from beside the stove, or leave the stove at a crucial moment to fetch the pepper from the table. But is my life changed? Well, yes. Once or twice a day, four or five times a week, it is.

Cake stand, $8.50

When I first saw this mint green cake stand it struck me as both a thing of beauty and a valuable antique. If it proved to be nothing but a thing of beauty I planned to keep it, but if it turned out to be a valuable antique I planned to give it to my mother-in-law as a Christmas present, as she collects china. A search on the internet revealed that Wood’s Beryl Ware (circa 1940) was virtually standard issue for government institutions all over England. It was common, not very collectible and therefore, all mine. Yippee!

Chinese soup spoons
50 cents each

I was once pulled aside at airport security because there was a fork in my handbag. I’m not a terrorist though, just an environmentalist. I always carry around a plastic container and a fork in case I want a take-away or find myself at a food court. But that won’t be necessary at the newly-renovated Westfield Doncaster. All the food court tenants there have been supplied with crockery and cutlery, and there is a communal dishwashing service too. Brilliant. Maybe one day I’ll be able to replace my ex-Eastern Palace spoons with ex-Westfield Doncaster ones.

Stemmed bowl $4

I once dreamed of opening a shop and when I described to my boyfriend what I would sell he quipped that perhaps I should call it The Mother’s Day Shop. You see, everything I planned to stock was easy on the eye, only a little bit useful, indisputably but blandly feminine. And so it is with this stemmed bowl. It could be filled with pebbles and used to grow hyacinth bulbs, or filled with the layers of jam roll, jelly, custard and whipped cream that make up a trifle. Personally, I’m still devastated that trifle seems to have gone the way of black forest cake and free city parking.

Butter pad and knife, $5

Remember Johnson of Australia? No, me neither. But the ladies at the op shop do and they’ve put a premium on this gift set. I like the delicate flower motif on the dish but the thing that makes me truly misty-eyed is the packaging. The two-tone cardboard is unwaxed and free of UV coatings and the display holes are just that – holes. Nowadays, plastic inserts or all-over shrink-wrap are de rigueur for gift sets and they are neither necessary nor recyclable.

Chrome tray, $6

When Laura Doyle’s The Surrendered Wife was published in 2001 there was concerned talk that the 1950s housewife was back. But nope, she’s dead. And this Ranleigh tray has been popping up in op shops all over town. I bought this one for a friend who’d decided to kit out her new home with genuine mid-century vintage combined with the odd piece of genuine IKEA.