All your eggs

I'd say that I've had my laundry basket for as long as I can remember, except I remember getting it. It's green, about ten years old, and very boxy without any of those newfangled curves designed to fit around your hip. One Easter we found that instead of our usual baskets, our mom had bought each of us a laundry basket for the folding table in the laundry room. She sent us on a treasure hunt around the house and yard that ended in the basement where our new laundry baskets were waiting for us.

My candy didn't look like much when it was spread over the bottom of such a huge container. And with these baskets came the news that our mom now expected us to be in charge of our own laundry. At least the folding and sorting of it. And if she was doing laundry, having these baskets would help her to get the right clothes to the right people. There were a few problems with the system, one being that it was hard to know whose clothes were whose. At one point we all had dots on the tags of our clothes. Being the fifth child, I had five dots on mine, and so on and so forth. But another problem was that some people had too many clothes to fit in their basket. H's clothes were always spilling over into F's basket and he didn't much care for that. And there were too many of us for us to all have differently colored baskets. Mine is green, as was Bony M's, so baskets occasionally got mixed up.

And then there was the extra basket that stayed on the floor next to the washer where the wet clothes were emptied into if there was a wait for the dryer. Mine ended up in that spot in place of the regular basket for a period of time before I managed to rescue it. The basket that had been there three baskets ago had a most unfortunate fate; it was used to carry pieces of wood in from the backyard and I found it one day behind the playhouse, nothing but splinters of plastic, decomposing into the Earth. I wasn't about to let that happen to my basket. I never let it away from me after that realization, that if you don't take care of your basket there are serious consequences.

So I was more than a little miffed when I found a small crack in my basket recently. Right in the top corner where there's a great chance of it expanding into something more serious. I've had this laundry basket for a long time and was planning on having it for many years to come, and then this happened. I don't want another basket, no matter what people are always saying about having more than one basket to put your eggs in. You know what? This laundry basket has been a big part of my life, and it's seen me through a lot of poor fashion decisions. In sickness and in health right? Ten more years laundry basket, you and me!