Advertorial - Laundry Baskets Letter

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 run their homes. But I've been asked about my laundry basket, of all things, so many times in the last fortnight that I thought I'd better put it down on paper once and be done with it.

It started the weekend my granddaughter Saoirse came to stay. She stood in the bathroom doorway, looked at the corner, and came straight out with it.

She wasn't wrong. A white plastic thing gone yellow at the rim, with a crack down one side that caught every pair of tights I owned. I'd been pushing it behind the door whenever anyone called for the best part of ten years.

Nobody sets out to buy something ugly. You pick up the cheap one in a hurry, meaning to replace it, and then ten years go by and it's still there.

A laundry basket is never anyone's idea of something nice. It's a chore, not a thing you choose.

So we end up with plastic tubs and mesh pop-ups the colour of a waiting room, and we tuck them into corners and try not to look at them.

And because it's only a laundry basket, it never makes it to the top of the list. There's always something more important.

I'd always thought a basket had to be plastic to be practical. Something that wipes clean, holds its shape and does the job.

Turns out a quilted fabric one does all that and looks lovely as well. It stands up on its own even when it's empty, it wipes clean, and it folds flat when you don't need it. The only real difference is that there's a picture on it instead of nothing at all.

It took me until 67 to find out I didn't have to choose between practical and pretty. Nobody had ever offered me the pretty one.

It's from Ellie Dublin, a small Irish boutique I'd only known for clothes until my daughter showed me they do baskets as well.

Mine is the Shila: a quilted basket with big woolly sheep grazing on rolling green and yellow hills, under a swirling blue night sky full of golden moons. It looks like a Van Gogh painting that someone put sheep into. I grew up on a farm outside Tullamore, and every spring of my childhood was spent in the lambing shed, so the minute I saw it I knew. They have plenty of other designs too, which I'll come back to.

It's properly made. The quilting is soft but has some body to it, so it stands up straight whether it's full or empty, and the canvas handles are stitched on well enough to carry it up the stairs fully loaded. The picture goes the whole way round, so there's no bad side to it.

It comes in three sizes as well: a small one for the bathroom, a medium for the bedroom, and a large one for a family's worth of towels.

It lives out in the open now, in the corner of the bedroom, where the plastic one would never have been let sit.

My friend Bríd, who wouldn't notice if I painted the kitchen purple, asked where I got it the first time she saw it. My neighbour asked the next day. And Saoirse, who started all this, has decided the big sheep with the startled eyes is hers. She's named him Seamus and checks on him every time she visits.

Nobody has ever asked me about a laundry basket in my life. Now it's the first thing they mention.

I'll be honest, the price is what made me suspicious. They're running their Early Autumn Sale at the moment, with up to 80% off across the whole shop, and the Shila starts at €39.95, down from €80.00.

My first thought was that it was a lot for a laundry basket. Then I added up what I'd spent over the years replacing cracked plastic ones, and every one of them ended up behind a door.

There's no catch that I've found. Each basket is made to order, so it's printed and stitched when you buy it. And if it isn't right for you, you have 30 days to send it back.

I read the reviews before I ordered, the way I imagine you're doing now. This was the one that decided it for me:

Then I went back and ordered a small one for the bathroom as well. Two baskets got me an extra 10% off, which helped.

Go and have a look at the laundry basket in your bathroom. If it's plastic, and cracked, and you hide it when people call, you've simply never been offered a nicer one. Now you have.

It's a small thing. But the small ugly things in a house wear on you more than you'd think, and this is an easy one to put right.

Two practical things. The sale is on now, and the popular designs go first because they're made to order. And there are plenty to choose from, so there'll be one that's properly you.

The plastic one went out with the recycling, and I haven't missed it once.