Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Expanding My Vocabulary: Organizing Products from the U.K.

shoe hanging storage bag - also known as a shoe tidy - with rose pattern

A shoe tidy? That's the latest addition to my English vocabulary - as in the language spoken on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean from me. (Here in the U.S., we'd call this a shoe organizer or a shoe bag.)

I love poking around shops from faraway places - and today we go to Cath Kidston, courtesy of Redbook Magazine (and my neighbor who brought me the May 2008 edition, with its 24 stylish space savers).


peg bag for clothespins

Peg bags are what we'd call clothespin bags in the U.S. - but the whole idea was new to me. (On the other hand, it wasn't new to my neighbor, so maybe that's just the gap in my knowledge rather than a U.S./U.K. thing.)


peg bag with poppy design

Stepping away from Cath Kidston for a minute, this peg bag from Pouch's Shop on Etsy really caught my eye - now that I know to look for peg bags!


plastic bag holder

Returning to Cath Kidston, carrier bag store was a new phrase for me - what we'd call a grocery bag dispenser, grocery bag holder, or plastic bag keeper (or some such) in the U.S. (Again, there are some lovely dispenser bags over on Etsy.)


sewing basket shaped like a house

And finally, the house sewing basket caught my eye - and all I do in the way of sewing is fix a torn hem and sew on a wayward button.

Related Post: Desk Tidy: A Product, Not a Dream

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I spent several hours last week searching online for a pattern to make a toilet paper roll holder - to hold spare rolls of toilet paper where they'd be easy to reach when you need them.

I finally worked out that what we call "toilet PAPER" y'all ;-) call "toilet TISSUE".

I still didn't find a pattern; so I made my own.

Australia is an interesting mix of English (our heritage) and Amercian (our television).

They are never clothes-pins, however, always pegs. My peg bag is a similar design to the one you show from Pouch's Shop on Etsy, but it's made out of shadecloth, so I can leave it hanging on Hills Hoist when it rains. (Any other new words in there?)

I would call the first article a 'shoe organiser' ("s" not "z"), and the last one a 'shopping bag', 'plastic bag' or 'grocery bag' holder. A 'shoe bag' would be a draw string bag to cart your shoes to and from, say, the gym, or work, etc.

Jeri Dansky said...

SueBK, I call it toilet PAPER, too. (See this post.) But there are plenty of regional differences here, and I've certainly heard toilet TISSUE used.

Shadecloth was new to me - but that might simply be because I'm not much of gardener.

But Hill's Hoist seems to be an Australian term/product - thank you for one!

Hmm, I think of a "shoe bag" the same way you do - I used shoe bags when I lived in Michigan and needed to carry shoes with me when I was wearing boots. But The Container Store uses overdoor shoe bag for that first item. (I guess I should have added the "overdoor" part.)