Tuesday, May 29, 2007

29 May 2007: Found a used towel in the rubbish

I was shocked yesterday to spot a used bath towel in the rubbish (garbage) bin (can).

Yesterday, coincidentally, was the day I took Beloved to Brent Cross to buy a set of new bath towels, only the best. It was a moment of great generosity, although it is true we did go halves on the towels. The previous bath towels were still in perfect working order, although admittedly a bit tatty around the edges - a bit 'ribbony' you might say. However, like the bad bits on a lump of cheese, the tatty bits could be removed with a sharp knife or a good pair of scissors.

The towels we had were certainly not new, having been purchased a number of years ago, probably the best part of twenty. Colourwise they were not perfect: they had long since turned that purply or brownish colour all things fabric seem to eventually turn to when washed alongside other colours. And - no matter what the washing instructions say - this WILL happen at some stage in the towel's life, or any other garment for that matter.

The laundering instructions inside clothes make me laugh. Who honestly is going to wash the whole family's numerous pairs of different-coloured denims inside out on their own at forty degrees? I mean the Beloved seems to spend half her time rushing from the machine to the clothes line with a set of pegs between her lips, and that's without the neurosis. And not a million miles away logically are the ironing instructions, which invariably amount to: "iron this item at '3', even though it's not going to look ironed unless you iron it at '4' with maximum steam".

It all boils down to this: wash as much as you can all together, as cool as possible in a 'delicate' wash, then iron it if you have to, again everything at full pelt, maxing the steam. (For legal purposes this is NOT advice, just friendly banter. I don't want the pants sued off me, denim or otherwise.)

Anyway, none of the above bothered me much, since age, colour or even ease of ironing are not to me criteria for getting rid of a perfectly good towel that still has many years of good life in it. However, I could see it made Beloved very happy so I think we did the right thing.

I was looking forward to imagining also the joyous look on someone's face when receiving our old-but-still-serviceable towels in some other less fortunate part of the world, so that much greater is my sadness at seeing the towels had been thrown away in such a consumerist manner. I am not sure whether to rescue them and at the same time be covered in used teabags, spaghetti and what-not. It's also raining.

My guilt at all this was compounded by convincing myself that this rain was enough to justify driving my Prius to the local shops. So, a joyous day for consumerism, a sad one for Mother Earth, that's I'm going to say about it.

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