Friday, January 26, 2007

Bless You

My sister Stephanie sent me some hand-made recycled real hankies. I must confess we mostly blow our noses on kitchen roll or Handy Andies. We choose 100% recycled kitchen roll, but the Handy Andies are made from virgin woodpulp, and both are probably chlorine bleached which produces organochlorines and dioxins that are just evil. Well no more. It's real hankies for us from now on, and lovingly hand-made real hankies recycled from my beautiful God-daughter's old clothes at that.

5 comments:

Gid said...

The best thing about using real handkersniffs is that when they get a bit too wet to use, you can leave them to dry out, scrape off the crunchy bits and then use them again.. I reckon a rotation of three of them will see a typical streaming cold out no problem..

Lesley said...

I remember being told that paper hankies are better for everyone because they (if disposed of properly!) prevent the spread of germs.
However, we still use the stack of 'real' hankies inherited from my parents. That's a form of recycling, isn't it?
I have to admit that they are a whole lot softer on the snitch than any form of paper ones.
Ours are less colourful than yours,though

Melanie Rimmer said...

Lesley - disposable goods are often marketed as being "more hygeinic" but it's all hype. Once you're using common sense food safety and handwashing you have all the hygeine you need if you ask me. In fact over-use of antibacterial products seems to be weakening our immune systems and making us less healthy. But mainly the endless pursuit of "cleanliness" and "hygeine" is one of the prime ways marketers persuade us to spend money on products we don't need. After all, the people who make dishcloths sell each customer a few cloths per year (even fewer to people like me who reuse old t-shirts as dishcloths), but the people who sell disposable kitchen wipes sell dozens of packs to each customer per year, and if they can kid you that you need special kitchen wipes for the kitchen and totally different bathroom wipes for the bathroom, and special furniture wipes and window wipes and God-only-knows-what wipes for other specialised purposes they can sell you millions of the damned things. Phrases like "deep down clean" "not just clean but hygeinically clean" "whiter than white" "blue-white" and so on ring massive alarm bells in my head now, that someone is trying to sell me something I don't need. You keep on with your real hankies. You're saving money, saving the planet, and you're just as hygeinic as the mug who buys disposable products.

Anonymous said...

Very thoughtful of your sister :)

We use old t-shirts and my other halves old boxers etc for rags which is what we use to clean etc. We have a few bought fabric dishcloths, which we used to wash up and they just go in the wash like everything else.

You are right to be sceptical of all those marketing slogans - Surely the cocktail of chemicals used in these products are worse for us that using washable hankies! Not to mention their impact on the environment.

Go hankie users!

Anonymous said...

Hankies, tissues. paper towel, what are they?

Try working outside for hours in the wind and cold with two pairs of gloves on, scarves, jackets, etc, and then try to blow your nose without unravelling all your carefully tucked in clothing and losing your warmth.

Not possible. In the end you just give up - after all, it's not like anyone important is going to notice.

Plus a little snot tends to blend in well with the slush, mud, pig dung, chicken poop, damp barley dust, wood shavings, diesel, grease, oil, chook disinfectant and creosote that I'm normally coated with.

The only problem is when I occasionally forget just how bad I look and smell, and nip into town for some milk or to collect the boys without cleaning up and changing.

People tend to retreat very fast, so I suppose a nice, neat folded white handkerchief in my top pocket would add a little class to my ensemble...