Making due and Mending

Quick one today.

For those of you who follow my podcast, you probably have already gotten the hint that I try to be as "Green" as possible. To me, that means trying to fix things rather than replace them and overall trying to use less.

Yesterday I spent about an hour mending a laundry basket and thought I might as well share, since I can't be the only one who has this type of trouble.

I've included a before and after pic of what I was working on so that you can see what I figured out.

Using a light colored yarn from my teaching box (in this case, some Rowan something or other), I moved the broken and pokey bits of the basket back where they seemed to belong and covered them with yarn. I used the yarn for two purposes: For the handles of the basket, I used a lot of yarn, wanting to not just reinforce, but keep any bits of the basket from poking out again. My hands deserve not to be shredded when I'm doing laundry. The other reason I used so much yarn is because I wanted a little cushion. Laundry baskets can get heavy when full. Why not make it more pleasant to carry them?

The other thing I did was simply run the yarn around the top reeds of the basket to pull them back into shape and keep them from sticking out and getting caught on things. For this, there was no need for the full coverage I did on the handles, shown to the right. Instead, it was a quicker job and I wrapped about every quarter to half inch. I figure, I've just extended the life of this basket at least a year, if not multiple years, which saves me the original cost, or at least defers it, and I haven't thrown something useable away. Also, I did this with a sturdy yarn, something all of us have near ay hand.

Just thought I'd share.