In mid-August of 1993, on a road trip to Maine, I bought an LL Bean tote at the Freeport outlet. It wasn’t exactly an exciting purchase for a high school student, especially as it was brown with a white webbing stripe leading to a leather handle. I would not be dissuaded; I knew it would last. I didn’t use it much until after college (though given the pile of library books I borrowed, I should have); it sat in various corners, patient, waiting for me to discover it could be useful. And it was. Last year, after years of steady use, more library books, countless skeins of yarn, tools, and other odds and ends, the bottom finally gave out. Thirty-odd years felt like solid ROI, so I bought a new one: the medium Boat and Tote with navy handles, a classic.

I think about that first outlet purchase, the kind you don’t find much anymore. I believe it was a bag a new employee used to learn how to piece and construct it. Part of the fabric was a selvedge edge, and one of the seams wasn’t quite even. It was a perfectly serviceable bag, and I’m thankful it was put in the outlet at a price I could afford. For a quality purchase, none of that bothered me at all.

I’ve thought the same way about tools nearly my entire life. I look for understated, well-made classics that last. Maybe they’ve been modified by other hands, or there’s something that keeps them from being quite perfect on the surface. I’ve always known that a small cosmetic flaw doesn’t change what something is made of. It’s what’s inside that matters. I am human, and sometimes want to try something different for the novelty, or to relieve boredom, for a week or two; but I return to what simply works. Sometimes that’s something I’ve used for years; sometimes it’s a refinement, something that’s evolved with me.

The not-quite-EDC EDC

This tote is a schlep-around-the-house catch-all that also gets dragged out to teach. It lives at my side. I know that sounds like an EDC, but it doesn’t carry a wallet or car keys; it’s a bag I work from. What I need from it hasn’t changed: it has to stand up on its own when empty, be wide enough for a standard file folder, and deep enough, at least 6in, for a hardcover book and a medium knitting project at the same time. It is never tidy, and I don’t want it to be. Writing instruments, yarn, ideas, and words go in; magic, theoretically, comes out.

My social media ad feed would like me to consider other options, and I’m sure some of them are great. I’m perfectly content with this one. The bag that started all of this lasted thirty years; that’s my baseline.

Do you have a bag you’ve relied on for years, or are you still looking for the right one? I’d love to know what works for you, and if you have a not-quite-EDC EDC-type bag you love, please tell me about it. In my next post I’ll talk about some of the other tools I keep coming back to; some of them are thirty years old too, even if I do need to pull out a fresh notebook now and then because I ran out of pages.