re: Please help with knives and knife maintenance

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and finding a way to keep your mother in law from cutting things on your granite counter tops.

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I physically winced when I read that

But pretty much everything jibbajabba said... End grain cutting board, regularly hone, wash promptly, don’t scrape the board (buy a bench scraper for that), use the right knife, etc

Also, just a personal preference... I have a 3 levels of knives in my kitchen:

(1) A cheap block from our wedding registry - used to do real quick things for kiddo’s breakfast or lunch or whatever. Not real prep work. Throw these in the dishwasher when they need to be cleaned. They were never really sharp to begin with but if they ever get terrible, I’ll just buy a new block

(2) A handful of good quality but not too pricey knives. I take care of these and use a whetstone myself to sharpen them. I use these for most of my every day cooking

(3) a couple of nice Japanese knives that I got as gifts from Coutelier (local knife shop here in Nola). I bring these in to be sharpened professionally once or twice a year. I use these when I know I have a lot of prep work or need my sharpest knives. Probably overkill, but I like them a lot