A child of the 70s, I grew up in an early twentieth century home with a clothes chute. It ran from the second floor bath to the basement. Our dirty clothes would drop into a laundry cart of sorts that I will describe:
It had a tubular (aluminum?) frame which would probably have allow it to be collapsed for storage though I never saw it thus. There were 4 plastic wheels and a canvas “sling” that caught the laundry.
Familiar to anyone? It would be perfect for my current clothes-chuted house and I want another (but haven’t been able to Google it up!)
Poop! According to most of the comments on Amazon while this may look exactly like what we had back then they don’t make 'em like they used to. “Pieces of crap,” is the general consensus!
Look at making one out of PVC piping. It won’t be as easily collapsible, but you could basically make any size etc. you want. FormuFit has some interesting plans for a number of household things.
Heh. So did I but Mom simply let the dirty clothes fall into a pile on the floor. My parents usually had six (out of 10) kids home at any given time, though.
We had one in the house I grew up in. (I actually went down it once about age 10. Sneakers and plastic gloves to give me friction on the metal sides so I didn’t just “chute” down. My little toy soldiers went down it often.)
What we had to catch clothes was simply a regular wicker laundry basket under neath it. The chute actually had a door at the bottom to block the clothes when the basket wsan’t there, but as I recall Mom simply had two (or more baskets) and put one in place wehn one was moved out.
Now laundry baskets are mostly plastic, but I don’t see why you need something special.
My dad designed the house I grew up in. He cleverly created a laundry closet that the clothes would fall into. You would then open the closet and and hold back the clothes with one hand, while sorting them into a 3 bag wheeled sorter. Unfortunately, they placed Mom’s sewing table right next to the cupboard so you had to be a gymnast to not empty the cupboard onto Mom’s latest tailoring project.
In our dinky post-war house in Detroit we had the same chute going from the first floor (and only) bathroom. My dad built a square 3’ tall rolling laundry catcher out of sturdy pegboard so it had holes (still got funky, tho) and he put a frame on the lid so my mom could also do jigsaw puzzles on it.
I wonder where the hell that thing is now.
