I am 63 and I have started replacing every plastic tub in my house with quilted baskets covered in flowers
I am 63 and I have started replacing every plastic tub in my house with quilted baskets covered in flowers
Six things these little storage baskets get right that forty-five years of Cool Whip tubs and cookie tins got wrong, from a woman who now owns three of them and is not finished.
Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read
First things first, so you know whose letter this is. I am Peggy, I am 63, I live in Austin, Texas with my husband Frank, and until this month my idea of storage was whatever container happened to be empty. Cool Whip tubs of bobby pins. A cookie tin of batteries and string. A cracked plastic caddy under the bathroom sink that I hid whenever anybody came by. I have never in my life written to a store about any of it, because who writes a letter about storage. Well. Here we are.
The baskets I am writing about are the Floral Storage Baskets from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly making the ordinary things a little lovelier for a few years now. There are sixteen different floral prints in the collection, all the same little quilted basket, and when the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.
I first saw them at a Friday night football game, at the booster club concession stand of all places. Our granddaughter marches in the band, so Frank and I are up in the bleachers most Fridays this fall, and the woman working the cash box had a little quilted basket in a midnight rose print sitting beside her, holding the 50/50 raffle tickets and her roll of change. Half the women who stepped up for a Frito pie asked about the basket instead. I was one of them. She told me it was one of three she owned, a different print for each job, and by the time we got home after the fourth quarter I had chosen my first two. Read on.
Two of mine, side by side. The dark rose one and the blush one. Choosing the prints is half the pleasure.
Here is what forty-five years of keeping house taught me about storage. It comes in two piles. The practical pile, the plastic tubs and old tins that do the job and look dreadful doing it, shoved out of sight whenever the doorbell rings. And the pretty pile, the ornamental bits that hold nothing useful and gather dust doing it.
Storage was either useful and ugly, or pretty and useless. I had stopped expecting anybody to solve that.
These little baskets are the first thing I have owned that is neither, and having filled three of them within two weeks, I can tell you it comes down to six things.
The day my first two came. I ordered them expecting another disappointment on the doorstep. I was wrong.
Sixteen prints, and you choose yours by name
This is not one basket in a color or two. There are sixteen floral prints in the collection, each with its own name, and they are real florals, the kind you would happily hang at a window. Mine are the Willowrove, a deep inky botanical that looks like something out of my grandmother’s front parlor, and the Rosehaven, all blush pink and soft cream roses. The one at the concession stand was the Noirbloom, big roses on near black, and I have not stopped thinking about it, which is how I know a third is coming. Choosing which print goes in which room is a small pleasure I did not expect storage to ever give me.
The Willowrove on my dressing table. The first thing in that corner I have ever been pleased to look at.
I spent longer choosing my print than I spend choosing shoes. I went for the dark rose one and my sister took the sage. No regrets on either side.
Jean W., AlpineThe clutter finally has somewhere to go
Every house has its drift. The hair things, the hand creams, the reading glasses, the pens that gather by the phone, the odds and ends that migrate across every surface no matter how often you sweep them up. What these baskets do is give all of that one settled home per room. Everything is stood up together, easy to see and easy to reach, and the surface around the basket stays clear. It sounds like a small thing. It changes how a whole room looks by suppertime.
Rolled washcloths in the dark rose one. The linen closet has never once looked this presentable.
The one by my bed swallowed everything that used to live loose on the table. Glasses, hand cream, all of it. One basket, no more clutter.
Carolyn T., MarfaIt is small enough to sit anywhere
I want to be honest about the size, because it matters. These are compact little baskets, about 8.7 inches long and 4.7 inches wide and deep, roughly the length of a hardcover book, and that is precisely the point. This is not a laundry hamper. It sits on a dressing table, a bathroom shelf, a nightstand, a windowsill, the corner of a desk, without taking the surface over. The shape is neat and boxy and it stands up properly on its own, corners where corners should be, instead of slumping like a soft bag.
Fits on the shelf under my bathroom mirror with room to spare, and it holds more than it looks like it should. The little size is exactly right.
Christine P., Fort DavisTwo soft handles, so the whole lot moves with you
Each basket has two padded carry handles, and that turns out to be the detail I use most. The sewing things come to the armchair and go back in one trip. The polish and cloths travel around the house on a Saturday morning and nothing is carried in armfuls or dropped on the stairs. When the woman at the concession stand closed up after the game, she picked the whole basket up by the handles, tickets and all, and that was the moment I understood it. It is storage you carry, not storage you shove in a closet.
Mine holds my knitting and comes to the chair by the window every evening. Everything in one lift, nothing rolling off my lap.
Darlene F., Fort StocktonIt is quilted and soft, and it feels as nice as it looks
The whole basket is softly quilted, stitched into neat padded squares, right up and over the handles, and it is lined with a floral print inside as well, so it is pretty even standing empty with the lid of nothing on it. It feels gentle to pick up, nothing rattles or scrapes in it, and it does not scratch a polished surface the way a wicker basket or a plastic tub does. Frank said it looked like something my mother would have kept her sewing in, and he meant it kindly, and he is right.
The blush one on laundry duty. Softer on the shelf, softer on the eye.
The quilting is what sold me. It looks handmade and cared for, and the floral lining inside was a sweet surprise when it arrived.
Kathleen R., Van HornAt this price, one becomes three
Every basket in the collection is the same price, $38.95, whichever print you choose, and that does something to you. You order one to try. Then the bathroom looks bare next to the bedroom, so a second follows, and then you find yourself choosing a print for your sister because her birthday is coming and this is the easiest present you have found in years. I did exactly that for my sister Sue. The woman at the concession stand owned three. I own three. I would put money on you not stopping at one either.
The midnight rose one, third and latest, on Frank’s side of the bed no less. He chose the print himself.
I ordered one for the hall and ended up with one in nearly every room. My daughter has claimed the navy berry print for Christmas already.
Ann S., MarathonThese baskets, against the tubs you have been using
You can keep your odds and ends in a Cool Whip tub for nothing at all. I did, for forty-five years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.
Hidden whenever anybody comes over
Hard, scratchy, and they slide around
No handles, so everything moves in armfuls
One dull plastic color, take it or leave it
Look exactly like what they are
Left out on purpose, in plain view
Soft quilted squares, floral lining inside
Two padded handles, the whole lot in one lift
Sixteen named prints to choose between
Look like they came from Grandmother’s parlor
About the price
Every basket in the collection is $38.95, down from $78.00, whichever print you choose.
I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that this is the run being cleared in the sale to make room for the new fall stock, and once this stock is gone, it is gone. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have spent more than $78.00 over the years on pretty boxes that held nothing and plastic sets that held everything and looked awful, so $38.95 for the thing that finally does both made it an easy yes. Three times over, in my case.
And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people rather than robots, so I read on. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.
If there is a tub or a tin in your house right now that you would quietly hide before opening the front door, this is where I would start. Pick your print before somebody else picks it first, because the pretty ones will not wait. Quit dithering and go take a look.
Peggy
THE FLORAL BASKET COLLECTION
- Sixteen named floral prints, one neat size
- Soft quilted squares with a floral lining inside
- Two padded carry handles, moves room to room
- Compact, about 8.7 × 4.7 × 4.7 inches
- Stands up neatly on its own, corners and all
- The easiest present in years, $38.95 whichever print
- Free shipping
Sale on now. The popular prints are already going.