Thinking About Making a Laundry Sorter

When you have a large family, laundry can be quite terrifying. I swear dirty laundry breeds and multiples overnight while I am sleeping. Four kids and their pajamas, school clothes and sometimes play clothes sure ads up to a lot. I am trying to come up with a better solution for sorting our mountains of laundry as our current method is  not working. And by "method" what I really mean is no method at all. Our washer and dryer are all the way downstairs in the basement, or as I like to not so lovingly call it, "the dungeon." When the laundry basket up on the top floor is full, it gets brought down two flights of stairs to said dungeon and then dumped onto a pile on the floor. From their I sort it into micro piles for towels, sheets, whites and colors. My colors are then divided into two piles: one for cotton and one for synthetics.

So basically what I end up with is 5 mountains of clothes surrounding my washer and dryer. It looks awful, not that anyone else goes down there, but its also just not very functional. I have been looking online for some laundry sorters, but nothing is big enough and everything is too expensive. For instance this four bin chrome laundry sorter at Target is $92.99. I don't think I could fit even just one day's worth of laundry in here.

So what is a mom to do? I got to thinking that maybe I could build us a laundry sorter out of PVC Pipe. It is relatively inexpensive with pieces starting under $1.00 each and this non-crafty, non-handy lady should be able to design something and snap it together without too much trouble. It might not look all shiny and stylish, but I could make it the dimensions that work best for our large family. And at this stage of life, function outweighs fashion pretty much any day. Plus it would certainly look better than laundry sprawled out all over the place.

So now I am in research mode of my little DIY project. Little did I know that there are multiple types of PVC pipe out there like plumbing PVC pipe, structural PVC pipe, CPVC Pipe and so on. Plus their are different brands like Lasco but I'll probably just go with whatever our local Home Depot carries.

I was able to find some step by step instructions which should help me put together some sort of plan. I need to figure out what materials I will need such as the pipe and fabric and how much everything will cost. I am fairly confident though that this could be an affordable project. Once I can get the numbers together then hubby and I will decide if its worth it to move forward. Chances are I will need his help with some of this and luckily he is extremely handy. I'll let you know if we decide to go ahead with it.

Have you ever built anything with PVC pipe? I'd love any tips!