Over the years, I have been given a variety of tote bags, those canvas carryalls that we seem to subconsciously collect. They’re much too good to throw away, but often we have far more than we will ever use. That is until this past week when I finally cleaned out my filing cabinet. While I use one half of one drawer as a true filing cabinet with manilla folders, the rest has turned into storage of items I want to keep, but don’t refer to often. Scrapbooks fill two drawers.
However, after I had stuffed a garbage bag full of discarded pieces that I didn’t want to keep, recycled much of the paper items and shredded documents no longer of any value, I still had six piles of modicum I wanted to save. Standard file folders were not a practical solution. I considered purchasing some brown portfolios like we used in elementary school art classes or expandable files, but neither would fit in the cabinet.
Then as so happens, a solution came to me in the middle of the night - try those small burlap totes taking up space in the back of a closet, the ones I would never use to carry outside the house. Voila! They, now well labeled, tucked neatly into the empty spaces. I knew there was a reason not to throw away perfectly good totes. And I still have a good collection of bags in which I carry library books or sundry items whenever I leave the house.
In finding this solution, I remembered that in recent weeks, I had taken notice of a lot of tote bags. As I waited in a shopping center parking lot recently, I watched a couple leaving a grocery store. Each carried two full tote bags. While I admired their environmentally sound stance against plastic bags, I knew I couldn’t fit all of my weekly grocery purchases into four bags. And if I could, I certainly couldn’t carry the heavy loads. But, I know it’s a eco-friendly trend in the making.
Also in past months, United Methodist Women circles have made a variety of health and school kits for the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). Each type of kit comes with very detailed instructions on the specifics to be included in each one. While some are packaged in large plastic storage bags, the school kits must be placed in a plain, without any writing or logos, tote bag with specified types of closings and straps. After looking for such tote bags, our circle’s chair person volunteered to make our bags so that they met the requirements. She purchased a heavy duty canvas fabric and made a almost a dozen bright green bags.
And, I’ve become aware that many women’s open style leather handbags are called “totes.” A quick check reveals that these kinds of purses by top designers can cost over a thousand dollars. Yet a canvas tote can say “expensive,” too, according to Miranda Purves of The New York Times. She writes “And although these anti-purses are constructed from organic cotton instead of crocodiles, they’re also not a bad way to read bank accounts. Moms who throw on their children’s private school tote from desirable bohemian halls... where tuitions hover around $30,000, may as well be wearing a Birkin.”
Linguists debate the origin of the word “tote.” In England, “tote” is the shortened form of “total.” And the earliest recorded use of the word in this format is 1772. However, others claim “tote,” meaning “to carry” came into the English language in the late 1600s through Virginia where slaves, speaking a West Africa language, used the term “tuta,” to mean “carry.” The first use of the phrase “tote bags” appeared in 1900, but the tote bag craze as a type of luggage began in 1940s.
I’ve been given every tote bag I have and most of them advertise a business or announce a teacher’s conference or promote a specific book. However, National Scholastic Press Association (NSPA) gave me my favorite for judging yearbooks. It posts a small NSPA logo, but the larger print reads: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the PRESS; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
I especially like this statement.
2016
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