A letter from a reader

I have carried a laundry basket down a hallway for forty years. This is the first one I would carry past the neighbors.

Six things I have noticed since a week at the beach, from a woman who used to carry her washing like she was ashamed of it, and never once wrote to a store about a hamper.

Peggy Dalton · Customer · Austin, Texas · 5 min read

Since you have been kind enough to stop and read, I will start with who I am. I am Peggy, I am 63, and I live in Austin, Texas, with my husband Frank. Every year, the first week of November, once the summer crowds have gone home and the prices come down, Frank and I rent the same little condo on South Padre Island. Frank fishes off the jetty at the south end of the island most mornings, and I walk the beach with my coffee and then sit on the balcony and watch the pelicans until I am good and ready to do something.

The basket I am writing about comes from Iris and Nora, a small boutique here in Austin that has been quietly dressing women like us for a few years now, and it turns out they do more than clothes. They make laundry baskets, over forty designs of them. When the boutique asked if they could put my letter up for other women to read, I said yes, on the condition I could be completely honest in it.

I first saw it in the laundry room. Our building is an old one, and the laundry is down on the ground floor, two washers and two dryers and a folding counter, so sooner or later everybody in the building ends up down there. Most folks carry their wash in whatever they have. A cracked plastic tub, a pillowcase, a grocery sack. I was carrying the condo’s own white hamper with one handle snapped clean off. Then a woman from the unit upstairs came in carrying a basket that stopped me where I stood. Tall and round and soft, with a sea turtle swimming across the top, two orange starfish, aqua waves, and seashells all along the bottom. Her name is Bernadette. I had her down as having bought it at one of the island gift shops, or else having a daughter who sews. So while we were both waiting on the dryers, I asked her, plainly. She laughed and said, “Every fall somebody asks me in this laundry room, Peggy. It came in the mail from a little boutique in Austin.” My own town. Read on.

The one that stopped me, in the condo laundry room. Bernadette let me take a picture while her towels dried.

Here is what forty years of laundry has taught me. Hampers come in two piles. In the first pile are the plastic ones from the big-box store, white or gray, cracked at the handle by the second year. In the second pile are the wicker ones that snag every sweater you own and the mesh ones that fold over the minute they are empty. I have owned plenty of all three, and I never once carried one past another person without wishing I had something better in my arms.

I had been carrying my laundry around like I was ashamed of it. I did not know a laundry basket could be something people stop you to ask about.

The day mine came home to Austin. It was folded flat in the mailer and stood itself right up on the bed.

I ordered mine from the balcony that same night, with the Gulf going dark in front of me, and I have lived with it for a few weeks now. Going by those weeks, it comes down to six things, and I will give them to you plainly.

1

The picture goes all the way around

This is the whole reason I wrote. Most laundry baskets you look past. This one you look at. There is a big sea turtle paddling across the top, a little orange starfish near the rim and a bigger one down in the waves, a palm frond, and coral and scallop shells all along the sandy bottom. The boutique says the artwork wraps all the way around, and it does, so there is no plain back side and no ugly side to turn to the wall. Bernadette says she has never once thought about which way to set it down.

Mine up close in the afternoon light. That turtle has been swimming across my bedroom for three weeks now.

★★★★★

It looks like a picture from every side. My company always thinks it is a decoration until they see the towels in it.

Rosalind M., Laguna Vista

3

Two stitched handles that carry a full load

There are two soft cream handles sewn onto the rim, one on each side, and they stand up where your hands can find them without bending double. Bernadette carries hers full of beach towels down a flight of concrete stairs and back up again every few days. I carry mine down the hall at home on wash day. The boutique says the handles are securely stitched, and so far mine have not given an inch, which is more than I can say for the condo’s hamper.

Bernadette’s, out on her balcony with the beach towels. She carries it up and down those stairs all week.

★★★★★

The handles are sewn on good and strong. I haul wet beach towels in it all summer.

Bettye L., Port Mansfield

6

It folds flat, and it has a turtle cousin

It is lightweight and it folds flat, which is how it came in the mail and how Bernadette tucks hers in the closet when she locks up the condo. And if one design is not your picture, there are over forty others, flowers and birds and cats and dogs and the seashore. Bernadette’s other one is called the Pearl, and it has four sea turtles on it, deep navy and gold, with a soft sandy cuff around the top. I went back for one of those too, the same as she did, for the hall bathroom where the grandkids keep their towels.

The two of them side by side before the Pearl went to the bathroom. Frank says I have started a turtle collection.

The Pearl, in the hall bathroom. My granddaughter counted all four turtles the first night she saw it.

★★★★★

Light as anything and it folds right down. I have the Coral and the turtle one now, and I am eyeing a third.

Gloria T., San Benito

This basket, against the hampers in the store

You can keep carrying your wash in a cracked tub or a grocery sack, like I did for forty years. Here is the difference, laid out plainly.

About the price

The small Coral is $54.95. It was $110.00. The medium is $59.95 and the large is $69.95, down from $120.00 and $140.00. The Pearl is the same price in the same three sizes. I will be honest, when I saw that I read the whole page twice looking for the catch. I could not find one. It came with free shipping, and it was the basket in the picture.

I will pass on what the boutique told me, which is that each basket is made to order, and they have a fall sale running to make room for the winter stock. Their words, not mine. What I can tell you from my side is that I have paid good money for plastic hampers that ended up out at the curb, and $59.95 for something people stop me to ask about was an easy yes.

And I do not trust perfect scores, so I read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars, which sounded like real women rather than robots. The same six things I have just walked you through come up in them, over and over, in other women’s words.

If you have been carrying your laundry around like you are ashamed of it, this is where I would start. Pick your size, pick a picture you like, and take a look before the fall sale ends, because once this stock is gone, it is gone. And if you are ever down in the laundry room of an old condo on South Padre in November and a woman comes in with a sea turtle on her basket, that is Bernadette, and you go right ahead and ask her. She is used to it.

Peggy

THE CORAL BASKET

★★★★☆ 4.2 out of 5 from 300+ reviews

$110.00 From $54.95

• A sea turtle, starfish and shells, all the way around
• Soft quilted texture
• Stands up on its own, even empty
• Two stitched handles
• Small, medium and large
• Lightweight and folds flat
• Free shipping

See If Your Size Is Still In Stock

Fall sale running now, half off. Once this stock is gone, it is gone.