Handkerchief

Floral Handkerchiefs

I was a tomboy as a kid. If there was a tree, I climbed it. If there was a bug, I caught it. I kept snails as pets. I was practically allergic to pink, and I would only wear dresses under duress.

I still don’t like pink or dresses. Until recently when I found a little black dress at Goodwill for a price I couldn’t pass up, I didn’t even own a dress. I do own a few skirts, but I only wear them to church or when the temperature gets above 120 degrees. (Or occasionally on laundry day if nothing else is clean.)

I do, however, like saving money. If there’s a reusable option for a consumable product, I’m inclined to choose it if it’s roughly comparable to the disposable option. I’ve been a cloth napkin user since I moved out of my parents’ house in my early 20s. I don’t buy paper plates or cups, and I carry a set of silverware in my purse so that I don’t have to use plastic cutlery when I do takeout. But the one thing I couldn’t bring myself to do was use handkerchiefs. It felt unsanitary.

Last week, I decided to get over it. I had an old scarf that had developed two giant holes in the middle. I cut it up into squares and became the owner of 38 raggedy-edged recycled handkerchiefs. The scarf was dark blue, light blue, dark purple, and black. Because of the design, each handkerchief was unique. I liked the bold colors – no frilly grandma lace for me.

It’s the height of allergy season, so I had my chance to test out my reclaimed hankies. They were more comfortable on my nose than tissues, and they held up to cat vomit as well. I was sold. However, it turns out that 38 isn’t quite enough to get through a week. That surprised me. I figured I would need no more than a dozen at most.

I took to the internet to get some more. To my surprise, handkerchiefs are heavily gendered when shopping. Apparently it matters whether people deposit mucus onto frilly pink and white lace or bold blue and green plaid. Men’s handkerchiefs are also twice as large, to handle man-snot, I suppose. And in a reversal of the typical pink tax, women’s handkerchiefs are considerably cheaper.

After going back and forth and wondering if I should just get men’s handkerchiefs and cut them in half to make them a less ridiculous size, or wondering if I could buy a nice neutral fabric and pay a friend to make some for me, I finally decided that blowing my nose on floral fabric won’t do me any harm. So I bought a 60 pack of lady-hankies.

They arrived yesterday. While I’m not thrilled about the designs, they’re not as bad as they looked online. They’re white cotton squares with some flowers on the fabric. Perfectly functional, and there’s no reason I need to enjoy the aesthetics of an item in order for it to be useful.

Floral Handkerchiefs
Mason jar with handkerchiefs folded in such a way that they can be dispensed from the lid

I have a mason jar on my living room end table with the handkerchiefs folded in such a way that they pop out of the top like paper tissues. And I keep a few in my purse. I’m kind of looking forward to the day I need to wipe my nose at the archery range. Shoot a bullseye and then pull out some frilly cloth to take care of the allergies. Keep everyone’s heads spinning from the juxtaposition.

I tried to come up with a spiritual point for this post, and there’s probably one lurking in the background somewhere, but I can’t think of it at the moment. But now that I have 98 handkerchiefs (38 reclaimed ones from the old scarf and 60 from the multi-pack I bought), if we ever have another apocalyptic paper shortage like 2020, at least I’ll have something to blow my nose on. So I guess this is a blog post about food storage!

9 Responses

  1. I think there is a spiritual message that we don’t hear often enough. God gave up stewardship over the earth. That mean we should be taking care of it, not exploiting it and using it all up, and wasting its resources, and damaging it by burning carbon fuel. Like little kids given a play room, we are expected to take care of it, not just make a huge mess with the assumption that Mom is going to clean up after us. Well, as God’s children on the earth he made for us, and loaned to us, we are collectively making a huge mess with no concept of how to undo all the damage. I hate the false idea I hear all too often that the second coming is right around the corner so it doesn’t matter about global warming because God will fix it. Where in the Bible is God promising to fix any damage we do to his earth? And why do we think we know the second coming is coming before our earth becomes unbearably hot. Such as 117 in Canada. So, using cloth instead of paper for hankies, kitchen rags, even diapers, will save trees and the water and other resources to process all the paper we use once and toss. The laundry of cloth uses fewer resources than the manufacture of paper. So, as stewards of God’s earth, we owe it to God and our fellow humans to protect the earth by using as few resources as we can.

  2. This is a great idea. I’ve tried to move my family to cloth napkins. Time to double down on that and look into the handkerchief possibility.

  3. Ha, enjoyable article. Thanks for being so eco friendly and showing us how it’s done. I suppose that’s the lesson. Nice and simple and saves deeper meaning for another day.

  4. I knit my own dish cloths and use them instead of sponges. I use a cloth napkin for meals. I’ll have to think about handkerchiefs now.

  5. I have actually encountered this exact same problem and feel significantly less weird now. Try googling for ‘ladies plaid handkerchief’. There are some that are not so entirely floral/lacy/pastel.

    I got most of my hankies from an estate sale (after not wanting the floral things that popped up online). There was a mix of men’s and women’s sizes. I prefer the women’s size. They fit better in my woman-sized pockets {insert eyeroll} and small woman-sized hands.

  6. I am a guy and I love using floral kerchiefs ,Not the ones you got ,but there are some really cute ones on Etsy .Makes me feel a bit feminine but I like it .

  7. I am a guy and I love using floral kerchiefs ,Not the ones you got ,but there are some really cute ones on Etsy .Makes me feel a bit feminine but I like it .
    I also never use them for snot ,just to wipe off sweat

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