5 Reasons Women My Age Are Giving Laundry Baskets As Presents

1

It arrives looking like a present already

The dragonfly and its garden wrap the whole way round the basket, so there is no plain side to shove against a wall and no wrong way to hand it over. When June’s was ready I tied a ribbon round the middle and that was the wrapping done. You can see exactly what it is, and what it is happens to be lovely, which is a rarer combination in a present than anyone admits.

The day the first one came. Out of the bag looking like this, tag and all.

2

It feels made, not manufactured

The whole basket is quilted, soft wavy lines of stitching running over padded fabric, with proper canvas handles stitched on at the sides. It stands there holding its round shape like it takes itself seriously. And here is the thing I have watched happen three times now: when you hand it to somebody, they touch it. They run a hand over the quilting the way you touch a cushion. No plastic bin in the history of plastic bins has ever been stroked.

The quilting up close, with the dragonfly doing its slow lap of the garden.

3

The best presents replace something ugly

The one that surprised even me. Every house I have ever visited hides the same object: a cracked plastic laundry bin that nobody chose, nobody likes and nobody ever thinks to replace, because who spends money on a laundry basket. That is exactly why it works as a present. You are not adding one more thing to a full house. You are taking the ugliest thing in it away and putting something with a garden on it in the gap. June said it was the only gift she has ever had that removed something.

The Iris basket at work in the utility room

Mine, on duty. Where the cracked plastic thing used to sulk.

4

There is a size for every house you know

It comes in three sizes, a small that suits a bathroom or a grandchild’s room, a medium for an ordinary bedroom, and a large that will swallow a family’s wash week. Val’s bathroom I had seen exactly once, at a birthday tea, and the small was right first time. That is the quiet luxury of it as a present: you do not need to know her measurements, her taste in colours or her shoe size. You only need to know roughly how much laundry her house makes.

Making up Val’s. Tea towels in first, and it is a hamper. Empty it, and it is a laundry basket for years.

5

There is a wrapped one in my wardrobe right now

The strange one. The fourth basket I bought is sitting on the top shelf of my wardrobe, ribbon on, tag blank, recipient unknown. I have reached the age where birthdays ambush me, and I have spent too many drizzly Thursday afternoons in a panic buying candles nobody wants. So now I keep one in reserve, the way my mother kept a tin of salmon for unexpected visitors. It has changed how I feel about the whole business of occasions. Somewhere out there is a woman who does not yet know she is getting a dragonfly.

The Iris basket by the front door with parcels

Leaving the house again. The parcels are the supporting act.