Composting the Laundry Basket

After a decade of use, okay, it was only nine years, my wicker laundry basket has broken beyond my ability to repair.  (It had been mended several times already.)

Considering it has resided with me in nine different houses (and made the corresponding moves) and was used as a display basket in our tie-dye booth for a couple years (meaning it was squished into our tightly packed Corolla along with all the rest of our gear repeatedly) I think it did pretty well.  It is my favorite basket because it is the only one that isn't plastic.  It was my go-to basket and I shall have to find another.  The replacement won't be so sentimental to me though.  See, the basket was also a gift to me from the ladies in my mom's office when I graduated from high school.  They'd filled it with soaps and towels and washcloths and all sorts of things I needed as I set out from my family home.  It was a great gift and I am rather sad to see the last remnant of it go.  It fit so nicely on my hip and always made me think of my mom and her lady friends.  I also had it dialed in so I knew exactly how big of a load of laundry to do based in how it filled the basket.  The plastic ones are all bigger so they fool my sense of load size and don't fit so well on my hip.

We are going to compost the wicker though...so its not a total loss.  Hopefully (I say hopefully as we have never composted wicker before) it will breakdown into the nourishing compost that feeds my garden plants and so continue on in that way.

Its funny how these little things sometimes mean more than one might think at first glance.   It was just a laundry basket, after all, but it was also my special, favorite laundry basket.