It was Robert Benchley who once said, “There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.”
What he should have said is: there are people who put things in boxes, and those who use baskets. He also should have added that the ones who choose baskets are wrong. There is no room for moral relativity in this matter. There is clearly a wrong answer, and baskets are it.
“But how can you say that?” asks my other half. “Baskets are friendly. Baskets are accessible. Baskets are cute!”
“Baskets are not cute.”
“They are when they’re full of kittens!”
“How is that even logical? Besides, baskets aren’t supposed to be cute, they’re supposed to be useful. Which they aren’t. You put things in a box, they stay in the box. You put things in a basket, and people keep taking them, or else putting other junk on top that doesn’t belong, or you catch the basket on your sleeve as you go walking past and it all ends up on the floor…”
“I see what this is really about.”
“I’m not clumsy! Let’s just say that baskets are okay for putting bagels in, or apples, but only for a little while or else the bottom ones spoil. And a bowl would work just as well, plus you can wash it.”
“Baskets are decorative.”
“So are boxes.”
“Oh, really?” He cocks an eyebrow at our financial records sitting in random shoe boxes on the living room floor.
“I know, I know, I’m working on it.”
“And, you can take a basket to market. It’s hard to carry things in a box.”
“Since when have you taken anything to market?”
“I took a little piggy to market, and he went weee weee weee all the way home…”
“You see? That just proves my point. That piggy couldn’t have run away if they’d put him in a box. You put something in a box, it stays there.”
“Yes, for all eternity. Have you seen the attic lately?”
“I’m just waiting till a certain someone is ready to help me go through it all and help me decide what we’re going to pitch. But until that day, things in boxes behave better.”
“Really? How?”
“For one thing, you can stack them. Have you ever tried stacking baskets? It’s a short cut to the loony bin.”
“Maybe it’s better if you can’t stack them – then you can’t have an attic so full of stuff you don’t even know what’s up there any more.”
“That’s why I got the storage unit.”
He rolls his eyes. “That’s just a bigger box. You know Judy, I should think you’d be the first person to agree that boxes are boring, whereas every basket is a little bit different, a little bit unique, a little bit organic. Why do you think that when people talk about creative thinking, they have to go ‘outside the box?’ It’s because boxes are industrial and prosaic!”
“Oh yeah? Well, where do you think they got the phrase ‘basket case?’ From people who tried organizing with baskets! Everything keeps tipping over!”
“You’re still not clumsy, though?”
“You have to agree, it was a very stupid basket.”
Boxes are also better for hiding things – like once-favorite toys, from children who have no room for new ones. And they are indispensable for things that need protection from light. “What about those souvenir menus from our honeymoon? Or all the old photo albums? How long would those last in a basket, do you think?”
“Around here?” My beloved looks pointedly at the junk basket on my dresser. “Decades, at least.”
It’s true. Not even I know what is at the bottom of that basket anymore. I’m afraid to look, it’s so furry with dust.
Which brings me to my final point, and one which I consider irrefutable. At least with boxes, when you swipe the dust off the top, you are pretty much done, whereas with baskets, not only does everything in the basket collect a hideous amount of dust, but once you have put on gloves and a mask and brought yourself to deal with the contents, the basket itself remains what my mother would call “a dust-catcher.” It just gets furrier and furrier until the only thing to do with it is a) toss it all out, or b) seal it up into a box.
And that’s why boxes win.
