Longaberger Travel 3: Magazine Basket

Although it carries magazines, books, folders, and laptops handily with its tall thin shape, the versatile Magazine Basket can carry so much more. The Magazine is one of JW Longaberger's original designs, called the Bread and Milk Basket in the JW Longaberger Collection. He created it by cutting the wooden form for his popular market basket in half!

According to the JW Longaberger Collection book, the Bread and Milk (aka Magazine) Basket was called the automobile basket in its day, designed to fit between the two front bucket seats. Do you have a beautiful old restored car and need this basket for your travels? If you drive a vehicle, new or vintage, with separate back seats, a Magazine Basket can sit between them with snacks and games to entertain children on long drives. If you have one long seat, it can separate the children! :) It is also nicely sized to carry pet supplies if your furry friend travels with you.

The Bread and Milk/ Magazine Basket later became popular for quick trips to the store. One Longaberger family story told that it could hold three loaves of bread, three bottles of milk, or some combination of those for the big Longaberger family with its twelve children. It is handy traveling to the store today.

The Magazine is another perfect pool or beachgoing basket and can safely carry items both dry or wet if you have a plastic protector inside. Towels, swimsuits, and toys will reach their destination and home again in this handy basket. Other treasures from the sea can travel here as well.

Longaberger's Collectors Club offered a flag 25th Anniversary Basket in 1998 that is probably the ultimate Magazine Basket. Perfect for carrying picnic supplies, mine is loaded with paper platters, bowls, cups, and some fun decorations for this Fourth of July weekend. It would be great carrying three big 2-liter bottles of pop and other beverages. The protector could even hold ice. If you put ice in a protector, try to put something absorbent like a thin towel between basket and protector to absorb the condensation that will occur. 

Magazine Baskets are used and loved by crafters of all sorts. Parts and components of all sizes can fit neatly inside, as well as books and papers. Some users placed a Bread Basket inside the top of their Magazine Basket to hold another layer with tools or pieces. 

I don't have a regular Bread Basket any more, but I tried the Heartland Bakery Basket, which is woven on the same form. It sat nicely with its top band on the Magazine Basket's top band, and the handles could come up, but then I was able to push it down on one end into the basket. If the lower basket is holding some pieces or supplies, that might  help keep it from falling in. Baskets varied in size a little depending on the weaver, so your Bread and Magazine Baskets might work together well. You can imagine the many uses for them together, especially with a protector in the Bread Basket. 

Thinking ahead to fall, imagine carrying a Magazine Basket to football games with cushions or a stadium blanket, a thermos of something warm to drink, some cups, and other items to add to the fun. The Magazine has also been used as a baby basket, carrying the many baby supplies needed to travel. 

The Magazine Basket is great for all sorts of travel! Two more especially handy travel baskets to come.