5 Reasons I Keep Buying The Same Basket As Presents
I have bought this one four times and kept only one of them. Here is how that happened.
By Sharon Parker, a customer on the Gold Coast · 4 min read
- It arrives looking like a present already, the garden wraps the whole way round
- Quilted all over, real patchwork stitching, so it feels made rather than manufactured
- The best presents replace something ugly, and every house hides the same ugly thing
- Three sizes, so there is one right for every house you know
- And the strange one: there is a wrapped one in my cupboard right now
The full five, with my photographs, below. The basket is the Iris, Dragonfly Garden, from Olivia Bennett Melbourne.
First, how I got here. I bought this quilted basket for myself in the autumn, a cream one with a huge dragonfly hovering over a garden of flowers, because I was tired of the cracked plastic thing behind my laundry door. Then my sister Margaret picked it up, turned it round twice looking for the boring side, and did not find one. She got the second for her birthday. My friend Jean got the third. When I realised I had bought the same basket four times and kept only one, I wrote down the five reasons it has become the only present I give, and the shop asked to put my list up for other people to read.
How they leave my house now. One ribbon, one blank tag, and no wrapping paper battle at the kitchen table.
It looks like a gift the moment you wrap it
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 once you have tied a ribbon round it. When Margaret’s was ready I added the ribbon myself, 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 arrived. Out of the bag looking like this, tag and all.
It feels made, not manufactured
The whole basket is properly patchworked, real fabric pieces sewn together with soft quilted stitching, 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 seams the way you touch a cushion. No plastic bin in the history of plastic bins has ever been stroked.
Sitting pretty in the kitchen, tag still on, before it found its actual spot.
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. Margaret said it was the only gift she has ever had that removed something.
Mine, on duty. Where the cracked plastic thing used to sulk.
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. Jean’s bathroom I had seen exactly once, at a barbecue, 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 Jean’s. Tea towels in first, and it is a hamper. Empty it, and it is a laundry basket for years.
There is a wrapped one in my cupboard right now
The strange one. The fourth basket I bought is sitting on the top shelf of my cupboard, ribbon on, tag blank, recipient unknown. I have reached the age where birthdays ambush me, and I have spent too many drizzly 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.
Leaving the house again. The parcels are the supporting act.
I have bought it four times, which rather settles the question. Mine has done every wash day since autumn, Margaret’s has been promoted to the hallway where guests can see it, Jean’s got a photograph sent to me the day it arrived, and the fourth is upstairs, wrapped, waiting for whoever needs rescuing next. I am 67, I live on the Gold Coast, and my present problem now has a dragonfly on it.
— Sharon Parker, Gold Coast
Two practical things before you go. Olivia Bennett Melbourne is closing after thirteen years, so what is left in storage is genuinely what is left, and once it is gone there is no restock. And the dragonfly garden is one of over a hundred designs in the collection, so if the woman you are thinking of is more roses than dragonflies, there will be one that is properly her.
IRIS | DRAGONFLY GARDEN LAUNDRY BASKET
Small $64.95 · Medium $69.95 · Large $79.95 · Free Australia delivery
See The Laundry Basket CollectionClosing after 13 years. Once what’s left is gone, it won’t be made again.
Sharon Parker is 67 and lives on the Gold Coast. She is a customer, not a writer, and she was not paid for this list.
This page is an advertisement for Olivia Bennett Melbourne. Free Australia delivery · 30 day returns.