Do you love museums?

What’s your favorite thing about them? What do you like to find?

If you’re like me, you’re always looking for weird stuff or things you’ve never seen before.

This collection of museums is kind of like that, except that they consist of things most of us have seen before, and often didn’t give much thought to.

It’s the collections of the mundane, the idea that somebody cared enough about a simple item or an idea to start collecting something we rarely think about, that makes these museums rise to visit-worthy status and gives the items in them more importance than we usually think:

5. The Mustard Museum: Middleton, Wisconsin

Photo Credit: minnemom/flickr/CC2.0

This is one that I’ve had on my radar for a while now.

I first heard about the museum when I would visit, and later live in, Lawrence, Kansas. There’s a brewery in Lawrence that hosts March Mustard Madness, where you can try out all kinds of mustards throughout the month.

Anyhow, they always mention The Mustard Museum, and I remember picking up a brochure.

The National Mustard Museum recently moved 18 miles from Mount Horeb to Middleton, Wisconsin, and currently has more than 5,600 jars of prepared mustard on display:

Photo Credit: Andrew Ratto/flickr

They also host an annual festival on August 5, National Mustard Day.

4. The Watering Can Museum: Giessen, Germany

Photo Credit: Stefan Flöper / Wiki

It’s a friggin’ museum full of watering cans.

The museum has only been open since 2011, but they’re always adding new items to the collection, which spans the entire history of the mundane but expansively used implement.

In German, it’s called “Gießkannenmuseum.” The town is technically called “Gießen,” which literally translates to: “To water.”

3. Gnomesville: Wellington Mill, Australia

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Gnomes!

Is it really a museum, or just a bunch of gnomes?

I think the layout makes it count as a museum:

Photo Credit: John Cooke/flickr/CC2.0

It’s clearly set out with walking paths. It counts!

And visitors are encouraged to bring gnomes to add to the collection.

2. Good Vibrations Antique Vibrator Museum: San Francisco, California

Photo Credit: Good Vibrations

So, maybe vibrators don’t quite qualify as mundane.

I submit that A: close enough, and B: they probably should be.

Museum Curator and Staff Sexologist Dr. Carol Queen is well versed in the history of the modern sex toy that started out as a treatment for “female hysteria.”