A Basket of Delights
Every home will have at least one of these – unless you’re an ardent follower of declutterer Marie Kondo or of über-minimalist architect Martin Pawson, who will suffer no squeezy bottle or any item related to food to be visible in his kitchen.
Old biscuit tin, decommissioned fruit bowl, kitchen drawer – you know what I mean. They’re the repositories of small items that don’t seem to belong anywhere else (though some clearly do), but we can’t bear to throw away because there is a remote chance we might want to use them in the future.
Often they lie undisturbed for years, sedimentary layers building up by stealth. I could probably do a geographical analysis of them and pinpoint the moment when my belief in the improvability of my skin (as evidenced by mini free samples of moisturiser) gave way to a penchant for a cosy jumper (as evidenced by little sachets of mending wool and spare buttons).
I must confess to having a number of these little caches dotted around the house, but mercifully I’m confining this cataloguing exercise to just one. I’m going in…
- a small packet of tissues with one tissue in it
- a stick-on bow for gift wrapping
- an empty sachet that once held spare links for a chain
- 3 biros
- a loyalty card from the baker’s with one stamp on it
- a luggage label
- a tube of Bonjela
- a lip salve
- a large plastic paper clip
- a plastic envelope with a glasses cloth in it
- a small cardboard fan with a shadow puppet on one side and an inspirational quote from Abraham Lincoln on the other
- a card bearing 3 Kirbigrips
- a mini tube of cleanser
- an empty envelope for darning wool
- a sachet of sugar from the restaurant where we lunched the day we lost our passports (I know this to be nearly 10 years old)
- a Help for Heroes wristband
- 20 plastic sachets of spare buttons
- 2 loose specs wipes
- a white nail pencil
- a miniature packet of playing cards from a cracker
- a sachet of 3 plastic golf tees ditto
- a pair of thinning scissors
- a mini tube of cherry almond shampoo
- a mini tube of cherry almond conditioner
- a Union Jack pin (why?)
- a My Waitrose key fob
- a tube of lip sore cream
- 2 plasters
- 2 broken elastic bands
- a lace bookmark
- a pencil
- 4 sachets of Elemis products
- a sachet of silica gel with the clear instruction ‘Throw away’
- 4 loose buttons
- 3 collar stiffeners
- an emery board
- a pair of silk knot cufflinks
- one earring
- a thing like a tiny pogo stick that I can’t identify
- one earring back
- 12 Kirbigrips
- one pin
- 6 safety pins
- … and a CNDP ‘Wine Not War’ badge
The mystery about collections of crap like this is that things disappear. You can guarantee that the next time I’m looking for a mini shampoo to take when going away for the weekend it will be gone – this item that I have seen in the same place intermittently for the past five years. How does that happen? I think it’s proof of the existence of Borrowers. Somewhere beneath the floorboards Pod and Homily are dispensing blobs of shampoo from their prize find, perhaps now conveniently mounted on the wall.
As if all this were not bad enough, in the interests of a pleasing symmetry there a small china dish on the other side of the chest of drawers piled high with a similar collection, though it’s more of a broken jewellery-themed treasure trove – and to be honest I wouldn’t have it any other way.
An archaeologist’s treasure trove!
Imagine unearthing some of these in a thousand years . What would they make of them?
Yes, the Borrowers are alive and well, living in my house.
They would probably run competitions to identify the use of these things – a bit like people do today with obsolete bits of kitchen equipment (some of which are only about 50 years old!)
What no blob of blu tac which has gone hard?
Oh no – this is a serious omission!
If this was mine, I think I could whittle it down quite a bit, but then there would be those few things left to form the nucleus of another similar collection…
You’d think I would have got rid of the broken elastic bands by now, but no – I just bundled them back in the basket after taking the photo and went off to do something else!