Approximately 30% of my laundry gets hung on clotheslines for various reasons. I want my socks and underwears to last longer, and I have a lot of clothes that I don’t want to shrink, because I am, as I like to tell my kids, “the tallest woman in the world.”
Now that we are in our new home, the clotheslines are much farther away from the location of the washer and dryer. For this reason, I thought it would be a great idea to buy one of those cool laundry carts that you see at laundromats, well, if you’ve ever had the good fortune of visiting one of those places. Unfortunately, repeated Internet searches turned up nothing to my liking.
Then, at some point, one of the rolling chairs from our home office ended up in the basement. Husband Jim said it made his back hurt. I can understand that, because it came from a CVS sale. I think it cost $29.99.
One day, while doing laundry, as I kicked the castaway chair out of my way, I had a brilliant idea. I took a cheap, plastic laundry basket, seated it between the arm rests on the chair, and gave it a push. Voila! An instant laundry cart, good enough to use until I could find something better.
That was a couple of months ago.
This morning, I came to the realization that I don’t need to buy a fancy laundromat-grade laundry cart. My hillbilly cart works great. I like that I can tilt the basket toward the washer and shovel clothes directly into it without dropping socks on the floor.
As an English major daughter and sister of engineers, this is just the latest of my “inventions” that make Husband Jim shake his head. Whenever these crazy ideas save money, though, he’s right onboard.
So, if you need a laundry cart and have a crappy office chair, you might want to take a second look at that chair, and give it an assignment it’s good at. This, of course, will work best if you have a basement laundry room like we do. You can have your first and second-floor laundries. I like my spacious, basement laundry room. And when we get too old to climb the stairs, we’ll install one of those riding, stair chairs. One would be there now, if it hadn’t had a sold sign on it when we first looked at this house.
(I apologize, if I have offended any hillbillies in this post.)
<Update> Saturday, December 14, 2013
This week, I took a comforter and sleeping bag to the laundromat, and while I was there, I admired the laundry carts with their poles for pulling the carts around and racks to hang shirts, etc. I was tempted to ask the attendant where they got them, and remembered that I don’t need one. I am still using my hillbilly laundry cart, and it’s still working out great. I stow it nicely under my hillbilly folding table, which is made from a discarded door that sits upon a cabinet that was being thrown out during an apartment-complex renovation. It comes complete with a vinyl-tablecloth covering, and inside, I keep beach towels, rags, and old throw rugs. Here’s a photo:
2026 Update:
Well, nothing lasts forever and a few months ago, 12 years after the original post, the black chair had been replaced by a nicer-rolling brown office chair and it’s pleather started disintegrating, leaving thin pieces of material all over the basement floor. So, I decided to buy a real laundry cart, but of course, I didn’t want to buy the $250 version. Lowe’s had one that looked okay for $99, so I went with that. It was okay enough. I might have liked it to be taller. Well, one of the wheels was wonky, and I wasn’t able to fix it. So I contacted the seller, which of course, was a third-party, and asked for a new wheel. I had to send a video and do a bunch of other gyrations before they finally said they couldn’t send a new wheel or a new cart, but they could issue a refund and I wouldn’t have to return the old one. I received the refund and then I became enthusiastic about fixing the wheel myself. So, I really went at it and, voila! I fixed it. So now, I have a free laundry cart. I’d say I’m batting 1000% in the laundry cart department.
