A letter from a reader

At 63, I finally got rid of the laundry chair

I have never written anything like this before, and I want to say at the start that I am not a writer and I am not in the habit of telling other women how to keep house.

But book club met at my place on Thursday, and three of the ladies asked about my laundry basket, of all things, and I have now told the story enough times that it seemed easier to write it down properly.

First, a confession I suspect is close to universal. There is a chair in my bedroom. A perfectly good upholstered chair, bought to be sat in, that has not been sat in since my daughter lived at home. Because that chair has a job, and the job is clothes. The ones not dirty enough to wash and not tidy enough to put away. By Thursday it is wearing more outfits than I am.

The chair was never the problem. The hamper was.

For forty years I treated the chair pile as a discipline problem. Every January I resolved to do better, and every February the chair won.

How it happens

Here is the thing nobody says about hampers. They are sold to be hidden. Plastic bins, wire mesh, that beige plastic weave that fools no one. So you hide yours in the closet, like I did, where it is technically present and practically useless.

Because clothes do not come off in the closet. They come off in the bedroom, by the chair. And if the laundry has no home in the open, the chair volunteers. Every time.

What I had wrong

I thought I had a tidiness problem. I did not. I had a design problem.

Nobody keeps an ugly hamper where guests might see it, so the hamper hides, so the laundry lands on the furniture. The fix is not more discipline. The fix is a basket good-looking enough to stand right where the clothes actually come off.

Make the basket beautiful, and the whole system starts working on its own. I did not believe it either. The chair believes it now.

The basket is called the Coral

It is from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women our age for a few years now.

The basket is called the Coral. A quilted coastal scene that wraps the whole way around, a sea turtle gliding over stitched waves, a couple of starfish, little shells and coral along the bottom, with a cream rim and two proper canvas handles. It stands up on its own, even empty, instead of slumping over like a sack.

And it is quilted and soft to the touch but entirely unprecious about it. Splashes wipe off with a cloth, it can be washed when it needs it, and when the guest room floor is required for actual guests, it folds flat and slides under the bed.

What happened at book club

Book club met at my place on Thursday. Three of the ladies asked about the basket before we had gotten anywhere near the book.

My sister-in-law Bonnie asked where I had found a quilt shaped like a hamper, which is Bonnie for a compliment, and I have decided to accept it as one.

But the bigger news was the chair. It was clear. Somebody sat on it. I nearly took a photograph.

Three things I have learned since

One. Put the basket where the clothes come off. Not where they get washed. The whole forty-year problem was the hamper living one room away from the laundry it was supposed to catch. In the open, beside the dresser, it catches everything.

Two. The handles are the quiet hero. Two canvas handles, stitched on properly, that carry a full load to the laundry room in one trip without digging into your hands. The plastic bin required a hug to move it. I do not miss the hug.

Three. There are thirty designs, and that is dangerous information. Three sizes, small for a bathroom, medium for a bedroom, large for a family's worth, and thirty designs in the collection. I have my eye on the tulip one for the bathroom, and I am not pretending otherwise.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me look twice.

The small basket is $54.95, from $110.00. The medium, the bedroom one I have, is $59.95 from $120.00, and the large is $64.95 from $130.00.

My first thought was that at those prices the quilting would be printed-on and flimsy. It is not. The quilting is real and dense, the artwork is neatly stitched-looking rather than smudged on, and the handles are sewn like they expect to work. They are a small boutique selling directly, so there is no department store taking a cut in the middle, and the sale is on now.

I read the reviews before I ordered, because I do not trust perfect scores. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real people, so I read on. One woman had written, “It stands in the corner of the bedroom looking like decor and quietly holds all the laundry. My clothes chair is a chair again.” That settled it, obviously.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat on my porch with iced tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If there is a chair in your bedroom that has not been sat on in living memory, stop blaming yourself for it. You do not have a discipline problem. You have an ugly hamper hiding in a closet, and there is a basket pretty enough to stand in the open that retires the chair inside a week.

Not because a laundry basket will change your life. It will not. But there is something in walking past your bedroom door and seeing a corner that looks intentional, instead of a pile wearing your good cardigan, that I had stopped believing was available to me. It is.

Two practical things. The sale is on at the moment and shipping is free. Thirty designs, three sizes, and once this stock is gone, it is gone.

The chair is a chair again. The basket takes the compliments.

Peggy