I know I'm setting myself up for being picked up, but... I use an older knife that I've never sharpened outside of "occasionally" running it back and forth against a tough fabric. It cuts literally everything just fine; cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. Nothing about my use of it _seems_ unsafe; but I expect that's partially because I don't cut very fast. Cooking, when I'm involved, tends to be "social time", where we prep and chat at the same time; so there's no rush.

I'm not saying it's not a good idea to sharpen knives, but a lot of people make it sound like you're a dangerous monster if you don't. And that just doesn't seem to be the case.

> outside of "occasionally" running it back and forth against a tough fabric.

As I understand it, that's technically stropping, not sharpening, but it should be sufficient to keep an already-sharp blade sharp over the long term as long as the blade doesn't see extremely heavy use.

That said, most people don't strip their blades any more than they sharpen them.