Learn to sharpen a knife on a whetstone

A sharp knife is quieter. It goes through a tomato without the little pop of skin giving way, and onions stop making you cry quite so much because you are crushing fewer cells. Sharpening is about forty minutes of learning and then five minutes a month forever: hold a steady angle of about fifteen degrees, raise a burr along the whole edge, then take it off. A 1000/6000 combination stone costs less than a dinner out. The day it clicks you will go round the kitchen doing every knife, including the one nobody uses.