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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Emma Beddington

It’s two years since the kids left. Here’s what I’ve learned – and what has surprised me

Blue-green bread bin with a loaf of traditional-looking bread on top
‘After two years, bread still lives on top of the bin.’ Photograph: jordieasy/Getty Images/iStockphoto

I come into the kitchen to find my husband staring into space, which is normally my job. Then he points. “It’s time to accept we aren’t bread-bin people,” he says.

I believe, instinctively, ancestrally, in bread bins; I come from bread-bin stock. But since we acquired ours five years ago, it has been used probably five times. On one of these occasions, a loaf was left in there for so long that the buildup of mould caused the lid to warp. I assumed the problem was living with teenagers with no object permanence, who, even if they saw the bread go in, forgot it existed once it was no longer visible. However, after two years of an empty nest, bread still lives on top of the bin. It turns out that even I am not a bread-bin person.

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