I have a laundry quandry.
A few years ago, before I was really into green and trying to buy only natural and/or sustainable materials, I bought this nylon laundry basket from a home department store. It isn’t your typical plastic basket, but a deep nylon cylinder held up by a wire coil. The combination of nylon and coil enables you to press down on the top of the basket, making it shorten, in order to access the laundry at the bottom–no getting your arms and head lost in its deep blue depths.
Not only that, but this laundry basket holds a lot of laundry. I’ve enjoyed it.
But alas, the inevitable has happened, and the coils have begun to break through the nylon. The top of the basket has a three-inch piece of stiff wire sticking out, the proverbial accident waiting to happen.
Of course, I’m not quite ready to throw it out. I will wait until the top wire protudes obnoxiously, or until the as-yet small hole at the bottom of the basket grows until it rips wide open.
However, I’m already wondering how to replace it when it must go to the laundry basket graveyard. I really don’t want a plastic one, as my goal is to eventually replace all plastic household items, as they break or become otherwise unusable, with natural materials. I could buy a wicker basket–probably even find one made of sustainable wood online–but having just spent several hundred dollars in other household goods and supplements, I just don’t feel like springing for a pricey laundry basket.
So I’ve been thinking, and analyzing, and strategizing…until I finally had this thought: the greenest thing to do is to reuse what’s already hanging around the house. Preferably something that doesn’t already have a use, maybe something that might otherwise be recycled or thrown away.
Then came my eureka!: a cardboard box. Large ones come through our house with regularity, as I buy most of my nuts and seeds online, often at least than ten pounds at a time. I can cut holes in the sides for carrying, and by the time the first box wears out, I will surely have another one waiting in the wings (actually, in the garage).
Ugly? Yes. But how many of you household managers out there show off your laundry baskets to company? It will hide in our bedroom closet and only show its face on laundry day. As long as it does its job, I’ll be happy.
And the earth will be a little happier, too.
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