Plastic free: Step Ladder
EnviroWoman is vertically challenged…cursed with tiny, little legs.
That’s why, in her new home with the high ceilings, and high cupboards, she needed help to reach ‘way-up there’ shelves and to hang pictures or wash walls. Usually she’d just hop up on a chair or a countertop to get the job done.
But she gave her chairs and table away before moving and she’s still hunting for plastic-free replacements which match EnviroWoman’s mod-but-funky design aesthetic. She thinks it’s gonna take a while to find ‘the perfect one’.
In the interim, she's living chair-free. So she started searching for a step ladder.
She had her hopes on finding a lightweight, all-wooden step ladder….because the longer EnviroWoman travels down the NoNewPlasticPledge road, the more she thinks ‘Buying only things that are entirely compostable are where the world should be heading’. Wood has a better chance of rotting into smithereens than metal or plastic.
Now you’d think finding an all-wood step ladder would be oh-so-easy, wouldn’t ya? Well, not so much.
Hellloooo….do they not make all wood step ladders anymore? Apparently not. Well, at least not in EnviroWoman’s new neck of the woods. She searched the big box stores, the $1 Loonie stores, IKEA, furniture and kitchen stores.
All she found were metal ladders with rubber or plastic slip treads on the stairs, fiberglass ladders, all-metal step ladders that came in a plastic bag (or that weighed tons) or worst of all...100% plastic Rubbermaid step stools.
I suppose EnviroWoman could have tried to hunt down the local Quaker furniture store (if it exists in LaLaLand) but sometimes ya just gotta make a purchase and stop wasting all your time (and using all that global-warming gas) hunting for ‘the perfect one’.
After 3 weeks of searching she found an AlmostLightAsAFeatherAluminum step ladder which didn’t come wrapped in plastic. It’s got a small rubber anti-slip pad on the bottom of each leg, but EnviroWoman can put up with that MINOR SIN. Being all aluminum, it’s certainly not an ideal choice, and probably will be hard to repair or recycle if or when that time comes.
But, at least EnviroWoman’s not feeling so vertically challenged anymore.
Now, if she could just find an all metal measuring tape – her world would be perfect.
So here’s how things add up:
Category: LadderLessons Learned:
SAINT: Lite Products Inc. platform ladder
Price: The same
Quality: Even better than the alternatives. It’s sturdy AND lightweight. Gotta love that
SINNER: Werner, True Balance, Eagle, Rubbermaid
- Sometimes 'good enough for now' is as good as 'the perfect one'. This applies to step ladders...but not to people you may end up spending the rest of your life with.
