Quad washing basket or a step too far?

[chumbler]

Hi all, thanks to your wonderful advice a while back my laundry washing skills have been transformed. I have also started reading the care labels for the first time in my life and noticed that I should be washing lots of my clothes on a delicate wash! I now do the following washes...

Towels at 60deg cotton weekly
Bedding 40deg cotton weekly
Wool wash weekly (lots of wool!!)
Light clothes 40deg synthetics
Dark clothes 40deg synthetics
Light clothes 30-40deg delicates
Dark clothes 30-40deg delicates

With regards to those last 4, I'm thinking of getting 4 washing baskets to separate the clothes as I'm convinced it'll be a less arduous task to sort clothes as I go (ie. when undressing), rather than when I want to do a wash. Also as I can't do all 4 washes in one day and I'd like to know when the basket's full so I know when to wash each category. Another reason is that I only have a tiny kitchen so barley any space for sorting.

Does anyone else do this? Is it a bit mad?! Thanks!!

I have more than 4

I hate "double handling" anything. So if you have had it in your hand once ie when you took the item off, why would you go through a giant laundry basket and find all the whites/lights/darks and handle everything a second/third/fourth time?

I have stacking Ikea recycling tubs that hold a load of laundry and I have a laundry schedule. But they are hidden inside a wardrobe, also Ikea. And they are labelled

I have the opposite. One massive IKEA bag.

We chuck it in the general direction of the bag during the week and on a Sunday night dh scoops it all up and brings it down. We sort in the utility room,wash it all together and put it away once.

If it is sunny on a Monday it all gets done in one day and that makes me happy happy happy

I think it sounds brilliant!??Is the thread that transformed your washing skills still about? I could do with a pointer or ten.

Ah sounds like the laundry of my dreams, the unwilling. I'm thinking of buying 4 slim wicker Lakeland ones as unfortunately mine'll have to be on show. Unless there are other ideas??

So glad I'm not the only one!!!!

Hah that thread is way back getthefudge but basically I was washing everything on quick wash and so it was smelling - not good! I am now transforming into a domestic goddess, in even reading The Housewife's Handbook! Anyone else read that?!

I have them hidden inside an Ikea Pax wardrobe in the "office" aka spare bedroom, and I have 4 in the utility, 1 for tea towels, hand towels and dishcloths, 1 for "cleaning" cloths, ie what I use to flat mop the floor with or wipe up any spills with (I have specific cloths for that) and then the other two are for different recycling.

Upstairs I have uniform, whites, lights, darks, blacks and hand towels. So 10 in total. Oh I have just realised I have another for cleaning the bathroom cloths.

Bedding is taken off the bed washed and dried and put back on, same for bath towels.

It works for me, I have been a SAHM for 11 years and I not only like organisation but I like printing labels for that organisation.

I have 3 ikea bins. One is for darks (put black fablon on lid), one is for whites (put white fablon on lid) and one is for colours (coloured fablon on lid). Everyone else in my house ignores this and put washing in nearest bin / bin with space. I then make DP pour it all into a large basket, citing bad bag, and carry it down to the utility where i tip it all out and do:

whites/lights - 60
darks - 50 (lots muddy kit)
colours - 40 with colour saver sheets (2 for luck)
bedding and towels - 80/90 as am a bit funny about bedding and it keeps the machine clean, imo

works well

bad back

I have an amazing cobbled-together system as I envied my parents built in laundry basket. Two cheap kitchen wall cupboards, sat on their side so the doors fall open towards you. Bit of chain to limit the opening. Four IKEA laundry bags (two in each cupboard) fastened open with hooks screwed into the cupboards. Bags take whites, lights, brights and darks. Each bag is a load. Everyone puts their dirty clothes straight in the bags (supposedly). And as the cupboards sit on the landing between my bedroom and the bathroom, I can see several times a day which bag is getting full.

Of course the system falls down because everyone else dumps their clothes in a big pile in their own bedrooms, but I made a rule several years ago that if it wasn't in the bags, it didn't get washed (and made DH go on holiday to my parents with a case full of dirty washing ). I made allowances for smaller DC, and will fish DD3s uniform out her room at the weekend as her jumper can't go in the tumble dryer, so takes a full day to dry, but other than that, if you have no clean knickers, that's not my problem .

So no, OP, a quad washing basket is a perfectly good idea.