A LETTER FROM A READER
At 61, The Girls From My Morning Swim All Asked About The Same Thing
I've never written anything like this before. But enough people have asked me about one small thing in our house that it seemed easier to just write it all down once.
Denise, where on earth did you get that?
That was Lorraine, one of the girls I swim with at Merewether Baths most mornings. Four of us had come back to my place for a coffee after the swim, still with salty hair, and she'd stopped dead in the hallway. She wasn't looking at the view. She was looking at my laundry basket.
A year ago, she'd have seen something very different.
When the kids had all left home, my husband and I did the thing we'd talked about for thirty years. We sold up and moved to Newcastle, five minutes from the beach. We painted the walls white, hung the shells our granddaughter collected, and put a deckchair on the verandah. It finally felt like the house we'd always pictured.
Except for the everyday bits. The ones you don't think about when you're dreaming about the sea.
HOW IT HAPPENS
Nobody warns you about the sand. It gets into the towels, the hats, the thongs by the door and the car. And when you swim every morning, there are always towels. Always.
The wet ones go straight on the line in the sun, because anyone who lives by the sea learns quickly that damp towels left in a pile will start to smell. But once they're dry, they have to go somewhere. And for a whole year, that somewhere was a plastic basket from the hardware shop, because it was there and it was cheap, and I told myself I'd find something nicer once we'd settled in.
A year later, I still hadn't.
WHAT I HAD WRONG
I got it wrong in two ways.
The first was thinking it had to be one or the other: something pretty for the house, or something practical for the towels. It turns out it doesn't. It's soft quilted fabric, but properly structured, with sturdy handles for carrying a pile of towels from the line to the bathroom. Pop a few towels inside and it stands up perfectly straight, instead of slumping in the corner the way the old one did.
The second was a bit sillier. I worried a basket with a coastal print would look like something from a souvenir shop. It doesn't. It's properly illustrated, soft and calm, the kind of thing you'd choose for a beach house anyway.
See The Coastal CollectionMINE IS COASTAL CALM
It's from Olivia Bennett Melbourne, a small Australian shop that's spent thirteen years making the everyday things in our homes a little lovelier. They have a whole collection of coastal prints, and I ended up choosing two: a medium one for the beach towels, and a small one for the hand towels and the sunscreen.
The quilting is soft but structured, and the print wraps the whole way round, so it looks finished from every side, not just the front.
WHAT HAPPENED WHEN PEOPLE CAME ROUND
They live right by the bath now, out in the open, which is something I never thought I'd say about a laundry basket.
Lorraine wasn't the only one. Two of the other girls from the swim asked that same morning. My daughter Emma noticed straight away the next time she came up, and sent me a photo of her own bathroom with the message "help". And my neighbour asked about them over the fence.
Nobody ever asked about the plastic basket. Not once.
THREE THINGS I HAVE LEARNED SINCE
One. It's not just for the bathroom. Mine has held beach towels once they're dry, the picnic rug, Milo's towel and, for one memorable week, a stack of library books.
Two. It arrives a little flat, and that's normal. It's soft fabric, not a rigid shell, so it travels compressed. Pop a few towels inside and it holds its shape perfectly straight.
Three. It's printed, not embroidered. I assumed otherwise at first glance. It's a proper high-detail print on quilted fabric, which is exactly why it wipes clean so easily, and with the amount of sand in this house, that matters.
ABOUT THE PRICE
I'll be straightforward about this, because it's the thing that made me hesitate too.
Coastal Calm is $64.95 AUD for the small. It was $219.95 AUD.
My first thought was that it was a lot for a laundry basket. Then I thought about what it was replacing: the same tired plastic basket that goes scratched and cloudy within a year, and that I'd been meaning to replace since the day we moved in.
Olivia Bennett Melbourne is having a Moving Sale at the moment, and some of the prints are being retired, so once they're gone, they're gone. If you buy two, you get an extra 10% off.
See The Coastal CollectionWHAT I WOULD TELL YOU IF WE WERE FRIENDS
If you and I were sitting on my verandah after a swim and you asked me about this, here's what I'd say.
Have a look at whatever's holding your towels right now. If it's a basket you never really chose, because it was there and it was cheap, this is worth a look.
It's a small thing. But the small things you see every day are what make a house feel like the one you dreamed about.
We moved to the coast for the sea. It took a laundry basket for the house to finally feel like it.
— Denise
COASTAL CALM | QUILTED STORAGE BASKET
$219.95 AUD $64.95 AUD
- Soft quilted fabric with a calm coastal print, all round
- Printed design that wipes clean easily
- Stands upright once shaped and holds its form beautifully once filled
- Folds flat to store or take with you
- Three sizes, from hand towels to a family's worth of beach towels
- Free Australia Delivery
Moving Sale on now. Some prints are being retired, so once they're gone, they're gone.