A letter from a reader

At 68, my washing machine broke, and for ten days the whole road 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 launderette last week, which is not a sentence I expected to write at sixty-eight, 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 Brian’s gardening trousers and never started again. The engineer said the part would be ten days. Brian said there was a launderette at the bottom of the road and he did not see the problem. So I went upstairs for the basket. Grey plastic, a split down one side, one handle held on with parcel tape, and a bin liner stuffed in the top for whatever did not fit. My sister June had come round for her tea, and she stood on the landing and watched me do it.

Pat, you are not walking your smalls down that road in a bin bag and a basket held together with parcel tape.

She was right, and I knew she was right, which is the most annoying way for June 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 pounds off the market, 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 tights. 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 road 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 June got her phone out

June has had one of these baskets in the 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 Manchester Boutique, a small British boutique that has been making the ordinary things in a house a bit nicer for a few years now. The basket is called the Rowan. 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 an allotment 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 shrugs off a splash and wipes clean. And when it is not needed, it folds flat.

What happened at the launderette

The launderette at the bottom of our road is run by a woman called Shirley, who has been there twenty-six years and has seen every bin bag, bucket and pillowcase in Leeds 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 student folding her washing asked if she could take a picture of it for her mother. 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 knighthood.

The part came on the Friday and the machine is mended. The Rowan did not go back behind the bathroom door. It lives on the landing 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 bottom of the stairs, 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 £37.95. It was £76.00.

The small is £34.95, down from £70.00, and the large is £41.95, down from £80.00. No catch that I could find. It is a small boutique selling directly, and they make them to order in runs.

I did read the reviews before I ordered. Just over three hundred of them, sitting at 4.2 stars. I do not trust perfect scores, and these sounded like real people rather than an advert, so I read on. One woman from Sherborne had written, “I only bought one for the bedroom and now there is one in the bathroom as well. They stand up on their own and nobody believes me when I say it is a laundry basket.” That was the one that decided it. Since then I have ordered a small for our bathroom as well.

If you were stood at my kitchen table

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

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

Two practical things. There is a sale on at the moment, and they are made to order in runs, so once a run has gone, it has 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 stairs as though I am going somewhere.

Pat