A letter from a reader

At 67, my washing machine broke, and for ten days the whole street saw what I kept my laundry in

I have written exactly two things in my life that strangers were meant to read. A notice about a lost cat, and a letter to the council about the bins. This is the third. I am not a writer, and I have never once thought it my place to tell another woman how to keep her house.

But three different women asked me about my laundry basket at the laundromat last week, which is not a sentence I expected to write at sixty-seven, so it seemed easier to put it down properly, once.

It started on a Monday, when our washing machine stopped halfway through a load of Ray’s gardening shorts and never started again. The repairman said the part would be ten days. Ray said there was a laundromat at the bottom of the street and he did not see the problem. So I went up the hall for the basket. Grey plastic, a split down one side, one handle held on with packing tape, and a bin bag stuffed in the top for whatever did not fit. My sister Margaret had come round for a cuppa, and she stood in the hallway and watched me do it.

Sharon, you are not walking your undies down that street in a bin bag and a basket held together with packing tape.

She was right, and I knew she was right, which is the most annoying way for Margaret to be.

I want to say straight away that the problem was never really the washing machine.

How it happens

Nobody chooses a laundry basket. It comes with you from the last house, or it was two dollars at the markets, or it was what the supermarket had between the mop buckets and the ironing boards. Then it goes behind the bathroom door, and there it stays for forty years, because nobody sees it.

That is the whole trick of it. Your laundry basket is the most private thing you own, so it never has to be nice. Grey plastic, white plastic, or a wicker one that eats your stockings. Those are the choices you are given, and you pick one and shut the door on it.

It is not a failing. It is just that for most of us it has never once had to leave the house.

What I had wrong

I had always thought a basket could be practical or it could be pretty, and not both. The pretty ones slump into a heap the minute they are empty. The practical ones look like something from a hospital storeroom.

What I had wrong was thinking it did not matter. It matters the minute you have to carry it down a public street with the neighbours at their windows. For ten days my laundry was the most public thing I owned, and I would rather it had been something I chose.

Then Margaret got her phone out

Margaret has had one of these baskets in her caravan since the spring, a different design, and I had walked past it a dozen times without asking. She sat me down at the kitchen table and scrolled through the lot. Cats, seasides, gardens, flowers. I told her I would know it when I saw it, and I did.

It is from Olivia Bennett Melbourne, a small Australian shop that has spent thirteen years making the ordinary things in a house a bit nicer. The basket is called Eternal Roots, from their Tree of Life collection. It is tall and quilted, in a deep forest green, with a big cream circle on the front and a tree inside it, and a Celtic knot pattern running round the top and the bottom. What stopped me was the roots. Somebody has bothered to draw the roots spreading out under the grass, and I have been digging a veggie patch long enough to know that is where the real business is. I ordered the medium that evening.

I will be honest, I did not order it for the tree. I ordered it for the practical things, and the tree was the bonus. It stands up on its own, full or empty, so it does not sag into a heap on the floor. The handles are proper canvas, stitched on securely, so a full load goes on one arm like the shopping. It wipes clean. And when it is not needed, it folds flat.

What happened at the laundromat

The laundromat at the bottom of our street is run by a woman called Shirley, who has been there twenty-six years and has seen every bin bag, bucket and pillowcase on the Gold Coast come through that door.

On the Tuesday, the woman with the twins asked where it was from while her two were trying to climb into a dryer. On the Wednesday, a uni student folding her washing asked if she could take a picture of it for her mum. And on the Thursday, Shirley came out from behind her counter, looked at it for a good while, and told me it was the first basket through her door she would have given house room. From Shirley, that is a medal.

The part came on the Friday and the machine is mended. The basket did not go back behind the bathroom door. It lives in the hallway now, where people can see it.

Three things worth knowing

One. A basket you are not ashamed of gets used properly. The washing goes in it now instead of over the bedroom chair, because it is nicer to look at than the chair.

Two. Standing up on its own matters more than you would think. You can fill it with both hands. It does not fold in on itself at the end of the hallway, and it does not tip the moment you put it down.

Three. Buy the size for the room. They do three. The small is right for a bathroom, the medium for a bedroom, and the large for a proper family load. My medium takes our towels and sheets for the week without complaint.

About the price

The price is what made me hesitate. I am careful with money and I will not pretend otherwise, and a quilted basket with a tree on it sounded like the sort of thing that costs more than a laundry basket has any right to.

The medium, which is mine, is $69.95. The small is $64.95 and the large is $79.95, down from $219.95.

No catch that I could find. It is a small shop selling directly, they make them to order, and Olivia is closing the shop after thirteen years, so once what is left is gone, it will not be made again.

I did read the reviews before I ordered. Just over twelve hundred of them, sitting at 4.7 stars. I do not trust perfect scores, and these sounded like real people rather than an advert, so I read on. One woman had written that the colour just makes the whole corner feel less like a chore. That was the one that decided it. Since then I have ordered a small for our bathroom as well.

If you were sitting at my kitchen table

If you were sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of tea going cold, this is what I would tell you.

Go and look at your laundry basket as if you had to carry it down the street tomorrow. If you would not, it has had long enough. There are over a hundred designs in the collection, so if a tree is not your sort of thing, there will be one that is.

Two practical things. The closing sale is on at the moment, and they are made to order, so once what is left is gone, it is gone. And do measure the corner it is going in before you pick the size.

The washing machine is mended. I still carry that basket down the hall as though I am going somewhere.

Sharon