OT: What's the point of a laundry basket?

Light/cotton

Mixed coloureds

Darks

All get washed separately in our household. Have you not noticed the labels on towels in particular saying "Wash dark colours separately".

We also wash woollen pullovers occasionally, these need a gentler wash than the run of the mill 'ordinary' things. At the other end of the spectrum one might want to wash sheets and towels on a hotter longer wash than clothes.

My wife set up 3 baskets in the small walk-in closet off our bedroom; one for whites, one for top clothes/colors, one for towels/Terry. Totally avoids sorting.

That's pretty much how we've always managed it.

Cindy Hamilton

Too much fuss. I do two loads. One is whites that get bleach. All colors including sheets and towels go in the other load. No wool in this house.

To simplify further, all my socks are plain white sweat socks. No matching, no pairing, just stack them up and put in the drawer.

Things are much lighter now. I brought home a top loader about a year ago on my pickup. Unloaded it myself, only had to move it up 4 steps to get it in the house. Did it all myself and I am 70 years old. I did have a small hand truck, not one of the larger appliance hand trucks.

I did move the old one out myself also. Just had to get it down the 4 steps.

Not that fancy. Because the bathroom was right above the laundry room, there was a flap/door in the wall that allowed clothes to drop thru an opening in the laundry room wall.

Sounds like racism to me.

So are you lazy or efficient?

Since I married and bought first house in 1966 I've bought 5 sets of washers and dryers and about 10 refrigerators and freezers. . Never moved one. Appliance store offer delivery and remove the old ones at reasonable prices so I let them do the work.

A friend once asked for help picking up one and I told him sure, I'll help, have the store deliver it and I'll give you 10 bucks not to have to help.

It wasn't so much the weight as the awkwardness. That, plus every time you try to lift it you find another crisp edge. I shed more blood than working on a cheap computer cabinet.

The house had its moments. My mother in law gifted us with a king sized bed for our wedding. To get upstairs there were three steps up to a landing that separated the kitchen from the living room and three steps back down. The staircase was step and perpendicular to the landing. I wasn't home when the Macy's truck showed up. After trying all approaches the finally told my wife 'Lady, that thing is not going to go.'

Eventually we bought a fold out sleeper sofa and left it on the first floor. There were a couple of other rooms there, one of which was supposed to be a dining room, I guess. Neither of use were House Beautiful material.

Google says an average top loader is about 150 pounds, but no one uses top loaders anymore. <g> Google also says the average front loader is 200-250 pounds, which sounds about right. I can slide my front loader around, and I can sort of tilt it up on either side temporarily, but I wouldn't attempt to lift it at all.

Ed Pawlowski snipped-for-privacy@snet.xxx wrote in news:4k_UG.79663$fa5.44249 @fx30.iad:

The basket is a buffer zone where you can sort the whites from the coloured items.

It's extra complexity for those who insist on taking off their clothes someplace other than in front of the washing machine. Some even have to have "hampers" to further complicate the process.

When I was going out to do laundry, I found it a lot better with a large plastic bag rather than a basket. For one thing, the bag (if not too full) can be held closed at the top, to avoid loss of clothes along the way.

Indeed, what prudes. Anyway, even if you take them off in the bedroom far from the washing machine, why not leave them on the floor and carry them to the machine when you get up the next morning?

I thought a laundry basket and a hamper were the same thing? One is UK usage, one is USA?

Colour fast dyes were invented decades ago. I wash everything together. Only one cheap red shirt from China on Ebay in 20 years of washing has ever lost colour. So I got a few pink socks, not the end of the world. Certainly less hassle than sorting every single wash for 20 years.

Some live in apartments that don't have washer/dryer connections. I have in the past and know some who still do.

That washer was the first appliance I picked up. All others were delivered and the old one picked up.

The reason I picked this one up was because of Lowes store. The old one quit running. I was promised delivery on Thursday. Was told Thursday around 4 Pm they could not get it delivered that day. Was promised Friday. Was called several times on the phone that the delivery would be in 3 hours or so. Finally around 8 PM was told it was too late for them to deliver. Saturday I was called and they said their delivery people were out sick. Sunday I decided to call the store to see if I could just pick it up as the cloths were backing up. They said yes, so I did.

Then on Monday about 4 PM I got a call from the delivery person saying they were about half an hour away. I told them I had alreday picked the machine up myself, but they could come by and get the old one which I had paid to haul off. They did show up in about half an hour and picked it up.

A couple of years ago I told the story of an electric stove. Got a call for delivery on Monday for a Wensday delivery. No show. Called them, next week the same thing. Called them Friday and switched to one they had in stock and they did deliver it that Saturday. The origional stove had been on order the about 3 months, but I knew that to start with. The old stove worked fine, wife decided she wanted a new convection type, so no real big hurry on that one.

To their sorry credit, they did nock off an aditional 10% for my trouble on that one. Nothing for the washing maching trouble.

I haven't done that much of that stuff, but the last time I moved I did buy a new refrigerator (the hardest thing to move). I did get help to move a long couch, but that one was special (It had belonged to my mother).