Interiors: Brabantia Laundry & Recycling solutions

Let’s face it, nobody likes talking about cleaning, or even dealing with it really! But family life generally means you have a fair amount of excess waste and dirty clothes on a daily basis, despite trying to limit it by recycling and re-wearing! As Athena nears school age where she will be wearing uniform daily, and probably dirtying it daily too it’s suddenly occurred to me that I’m going to be doing a lot more washing, though I do plan to get her into PJs as soon as she gets home after school if we’re not going out again. At the moment we have a rather rudimentary linen basket we picked up as a ‘that’ll do till we get something nicer’ interim solution but we’ve not managed to replace it yet. Brabantia does two styles of linen basket that I think would work really well for us, the first is a stand alone ‘Selector’ laundry bin with two openings in the top. This would be perfect for the kid’s room as they tend to get changed in there into PJs and in the mornings. One side could be reserved for school uniform so that I can take it all out at one on a Friday night and wash it all together ready to be hung up for the next week. The other side can be for Arlo’s everyday clothes and any non-uniform washing of Athena’s too. It has a flat back so would fit against a wall, and the cotton bag inside is washable and means that clothes can ‘breathe’ inside.

The other style I love is the Oval Laundry Bag, it’s a more portable option and would be better for mine and Sam’s clothes because we tend to get undressed in the bathroom, which is actually further away from the washing machine than the kid’s room. It can be hung on the back of the bathroom door (or a rail if that’s what you have) and when it’s full can be swiftly transported to the kitchen for washing. I also adore the mint colour, though it comes in a variety of colours, we could even have a colour each! I also love bags like this for camping and other little trips as you can take it with you in the car and use it for clothes/towel transportation on the way there, and dirty clothes on the way back so you can literally just empty it into the washing machine when you get back, plus they fit into smaller spaces a lot better than a suitcase does in a car! Their full range of Laundry bags and bins etc is here, we have a Brabantia ironing board and it’s the only one I’ve been able to fold without it attempting to remove three fingers at the same time!

We have recently changed our normal sized recycling wheely-bin for a larger one, which means we now feel bad if it’s not full. As we’re in a first floor flat it’s not as easy as opening the back door and chucking stuff in, so we need a solution for sorting our waste from recycling in the kitchen. I also don’t like to have a huge bin in the kitchen because we then have a tendency to overfill it and then the bag can’t cope with the load and splits, meaning we either waste another bag to get it downstairs or we run the risk of it splitting and dripping something horrible on our new carpets on the way through the flat, down the stairs and out to the main bins! The new Sort & Go built-in bin would be perfect for us, two smaller sized bins that fit neatly into a cupboard and can be taken down to empty individually or together, with the sturdy handles. There are three sizes, the smaller one perfect for a counter top compost bin (sadly without a garden we don’t have a need for one) but I think a 12 and a 16-litre size would work for us for waste and recycling respectively. Also, I know it doesn’t really matter about the colour of a bin but you might as well make it a bit fun, right?

If you’ve got any laundry or recycling tips and tricks please share them!