A recipe card stained with sauce is worth more than a clean one. Used things carry life.

Wear is evidence. A card with sauce on it proves meals got made, people got fed, somebody stood over a pot more than once. Keeping things pristine usually means keeping them unused, which is a quiet way of getting nothing out of them at all.

Take something you have been protecting and actually use it this week, whether that is a jacket, a notebook, or the good paper. The marks it picks up are the record, not the ruin.