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Anyone with children can understand the despair of industrial engineer (and mother) Bashak Anil over the amount of laundry they produce.The unsorted laundry piled up wherever”
It will pile up quickly. Not just dirty clothes waiting to be sorted and washed, but clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away. The amount of laundry isn’t always the biggest issue. It’s not just an activity to do, it’s an entire process that needs to be managed.
Problem: Laundry bottleneck
Anil explained to me when she and her husband first came up with the idea: TROFAST laundry system They realized that the problem was not a capacity issue. “This was the bottleneck problem. Laundry piled up at three points: pre-wash sorting, post-wash folding, and post-wash cleanup.”
These points are problematic because difficult decisions need to be made, decisions can be tricky, and resources can be scarce, especially for parents. “There are a lot of other things that need attention, and they run out, so I avoid these tasks for as long as possible, which eventually blocks the flow.” Anil says.
No matter how much capacity you allocate (that is, the volume of your laundry basket), you end up with three psychological bottlenecks:
Solution: IKEA TROFAST laundry system
The TROFAST laundry system has only two elements: a bucket and a rack. “This system allows him to handle sorting, folding and cleanup in one bucket,” explains Anil. That means your laundry basket turns into a ready-to-wear drawer. Each rack holds three buckets vertically, and each rack can represent a laundry category (light, dark, wool, baby, toddler, etc.).
The family collects dirty laundry in the bottom bucket of each rack, while the top two buckets contain clean clothes. Anil calls these buckets “atomic laundry units.” Items in each bucket go from dirty to clean in her next four steps.
How to install the IKEA TROFAST laundry system
Anil and her husband sold all their dressers to invest in the IKEA TROFAST atomic laundry system. She now has eight of these units, most with medium-sized (9-inch high) buckets, and eight categories of clothing.
“Anything that can be washed and stored together is a category,” she says. Of course, you don’t have to do everything right away. Anil suggests making it her own system by choosing the categories she launders most often in her house (such as her toddler’s clothes and her t-shirts for adults). Anil recommends using the entire row of three baskets as laundry baskets and dressers instead of sorting clothes and putting them back into the actual drawers.
A 9-inch bucket takes up half the volume of a family washing machine, so it’s washed and dried in short cycles. I use a few small 4 inch high buckets that can be purchased separately to make smaller items easier to access if needed, but that still involves an extra step of sorting after washing, so You have not combined the trays.
Applying the engineer’s logic to household chores allows you to build your system around things that handle the most traffic, like laundry, and focus your attention on fun activities with your family. “Laundry should never take away your precious attention,” says Anil.
