Feeling Washed Up?
Duct tape fixes everything!
Before I moved from Madison to Sheboygan twenty years ago, my husband caught me duct-taping the broken slats on a brown plastic laundry basket.
Maybe you’ve had this conversation in your own relationship:
“Throw that thing out,” he said.
“But it still works!”
Now, 14 of the 24 slats are broken, cracked from dropping it to the tile floor under a load of wet towels. After another move, here I sit, ripping off ragged and linty duct tape, repairing it for the third time.
Come to think of it, that’s how getting older works. A lifetime of being active creates another crack. Knees, hips, backs... At some point we’re all just old laundry baskets with fresh tape over last year’s. Would we throw each other out?
“Get another one. They’re cheap,” John says.
It reminds me of a conversation at camera club. After the evening meeting, everyone gathered for what Judy and Ron inexplicably called “lunch,” despite it being nine o’clock at night. One elderly fellow complained that his plastic fork wasn’t sturdy enough to cut his cake.
“They’re cheap,” his friend said, shrugging. “Get another one.”
My brain rolls up the math: billions of flimsy plastic forks tossed into the landfill after one use (I’m so bothered when takeout comes with utensils I didn’t request). Reduce, recycle, reuse, repair…
A cracked old plastic laundry basket is like an older body. Maybe some corners have split and the handles have broken apart—yet we use it because it still holds something, even if it’s not perfect.
So yes, I duct tape the basket.
For the life of me, I do not understand the "toss it" mentality (it's not a new thing, but it's getting progressively worse). Part of that is the fact that many items made today are designed NOT to be repaired. But duct tape fixes everything that WD-40 doesn't, so keep on!