16. The Strawberry-Shaped Thing on Your Tomato Pin Cushion Is an Emery Board
That cute little strawberry attached to many pin cushions isn’t just decoration — it’s filled with emery (a rough abrasive powder) to sharpen and clean rusty sewing needles and pins. You push the needles into it to polish them.
If you’ve ever sewn or done crafts, you’ve used it without realizing its real purpose. Over-35s who inherited sewing kits from their moms or grandmas now see this tiny tool as clever 19th-century engineering instead of random kitsch.
