Certain humble objects hold strong memories and deserve a fitting end. By Liz Low
THIS morning I cut up an old tea towel and put the pieces in the compost bin. That sounds a fairly ordinary thing to do but there is quite a back story to that simple sentence.
The tea towel was one of my mother’s and I brought it into our home when Mum moved into a nursing home. The tea towel had previously travelled from the kitchen in the Eaglehawk house where she had lived for 59 years before moving, at 84, to her unit in a retirement village in Melbourne, nearer her two daughters.
THIS morning I cut up an old tea towel and put the pieces in the compost bin. That sounds a fairly ordinary thing to do but there is quite a back story to that simple sentence.
The tea towel was one of my mother’s and I brought it into our home when Mum moved into a nursing home. The tea towel had previously travelled from the kitchen in the Eaglehawk house where she had lived for 59 years before moving, at 84, to her unit in a retirement village in Melbourne, nearer her two daughters.
The aforementioned tea towel was a pale blue and white check in a sort of waffle weave. It was still reasonably fresh when I cleared her unit in 2014 and I hadn’t felt like throwing it away. It joined our tea towels in the third drawer down, which is, of course, where all tea towels live. I was always aware of it being “Mum’s tea towel” as I used and washed it and put it away in the drawer again. But, by now, it was getting very faded and bit permanently grubby looking.
Last night, it met its match when I had to quickly grab a cloth and wipe up a mess involving turmeric. I rinsed and washed it this morning but when it came time to put it on the line, I looked at the thin, faded, stained bit of cloth and thought, “It really is time for you to go”. I thanked it for its years of work and went to put it in the landfill bin.
“No. You can go in the compost.” I cut it up to make the job easier for the worms but needed to get the “good” scissors as the kitchen ones weren’t up to the job. Using the good scissors seemed to dignify the proceedings.
I need to explain my composting system – if you’re still reading! Nowadays we live a varied life with a week in our flat in Port Melbourne and a week in our house at Cape Paterson where I can garden. When we first moved to the flat in 2007 from our house at Warrandyte, I had felt wasteful about throwing potential compost down the garbage chute so started to freeze the bags of compost. We’d had the house at the Cape for about six years by then and were trying to build up the sandy soil. When we’d drive down to the Cape for the weekend, I’d bring the bags of frozen green waste for our compost heap. It’s a good system.
The tea towel pieces were now in the kitchen compost bin sitting on top of the vegetable peelings from last night. I’ve just knocked out the coffee grounds on them and started the process of transformation. The defrosted bag of scraps will join the Cape compost and the lovely red worms will gradually work their way through it all. The cloth will take longer to break down than the vegie scraps but eventually Mum’s tea towel will be in the soil.
She’d like that idea and I do too.
Last night, it met its match when I had to quickly grab a cloth and wipe up a mess involving turmeric. I rinsed and washed it this morning but when it came time to put it on the line, I looked at the thin, faded, stained bit of cloth and thought, “It really is time for you to go”. I thanked it for its years of work and went to put it in the landfill bin.
“No. You can go in the compost.” I cut it up to make the job easier for the worms but needed to get the “good” scissors as the kitchen ones weren’t up to the job. Using the good scissors seemed to dignify the proceedings.
I need to explain my composting system – if you’re still reading! Nowadays we live a varied life with a week in our flat in Port Melbourne and a week in our house at Cape Paterson where I can garden. When we first moved to the flat in 2007 from our house at Warrandyte, I had felt wasteful about throwing potential compost down the garbage chute so started to freeze the bags of compost. We’d had the house at the Cape for about six years by then and were trying to build up the sandy soil. When we’d drive down to the Cape for the weekend, I’d bring the bags of frozen green waste for our compost heap. It’s a good system.
The tea towel pieces were now in the kitchen compost bin sitting on top of the vegetable peelings from last night. I’ve just knocked out the coffee grounds on them and started the process of transformation. The defrosted bag of scraps will join the Cape compost and the lovely red worms will gradually work their way through it all. The cloth will take longer to break down than the vegie scraps but eventually Mum’s tea towel will be in the soil.
She’d like that idea and I do too.