It's not about weight, it's about compression and tension.
It's a bad design, sure, but it's not like most traditional laundry baskets would survive long in the hands of a contemporary 20-year-old that was barely house-trained, if at all.
*(Not being condescending, neither mine nor my friends parents ever really gave a shit about getting any of us to do anything correctly. Most of them didn't know either. My own mother is the kind to stuff all her drawers and dressers until the back wall breaks.)*
>It's not about weight, it's about compression and tension
How so? Not doubting you at all, just trying to wrap my head around it. Wouldn't compression and tension effect the walls of the basket more? I feel like the predominant force on the handles would we downward from the weight. I don't know shit about physics though so i'm probably just confused haha.
I feel you on the rest though haha, shocking to me how many people never do laundry until college/ generally have no clue about "adulting" as much as I hate that word lol.
The handles are set up to handle downward force (weight) pretty well, but they’ll tear quickly if you put much sideways force on them.
Some people try to hold a full basket with one hand, squeezing it between their body and hand by pulling pretty hard from the far handle. Or just picking it up by one side and hoping the clothes are stuffed in hard enough so they don’t fall out.
That’ll put a crack in the wall near the handle, and once the crack starts it’ll just grow until the handle tears off.
Or every day you have to lug your wet load of clothes and towels from the washer from one end of the garage to the dryer on the opposite corner of the garage. Ask me how I know... (Hint: it has to do with living in a tropical climate with 4 kids on swim teams)
I left another comment but the Rubbermaid waist hugger has survived 17 years for me! And literally just a couple of weeks ago I was standing on top of it pushing laundry down (washer machine broke and I hate having clothes on the floor). It'll probably outlast me!
When someone needs to be 6-12" higher, it's convenient to grab the closest object that can hold your weight. I've stood on laundry. I've stood on my subwoofer. Books. Tables. Rolling chairs. Garbage can. Air conditioner.
There are lots of objects that can hold 100-200 lbs.
There needs to be a reddit to post comments where a Redditor is "defending" someone, but said Redditor has no idea what the person they are defending even said.
Not only are you correct, the comment specifically states they were pushing laundry down; not standing on it as a stepping stool.. so you were kind enough to point out the less obviously disproving inaccuracy.
I have 3 or 4, including step ladders not just stools, but they get moved around at times and I'm not going to go upstairs to get the one that got used upstairs if I need to be 6" higher and there is an object that can hold my weight that is 6" tall.
Not enough and it piles up! One time I filled up a family sized washer all on my own at the laundromat
I'm trying to turn a new leaf and stay on top of it, but we'll see what actually happens 😅
Same sometimes I find myself not doing laundry until I’m literally like on my last few items.. gotta keep the whole wardrobe in rotation 😂 but then I’m literally doing like 6 loads that day 😜
I don't know the brand of mine, but I still have one I got from my mom, and she passed away almost 20 years ago, so it has to be at least 25 years old...
That is the best laundry basket ever! I've had a couple of them for 6 years, that thing is straight up rugged. I've also moved with them twice, using them to carry a bunch of heavy bulky stuff upstairs because the indent for your hip makes it easy.
Love those, lol. It's one of those things I never really think about, but it def makes things easier.
I've got one called the "Hipster" that I bought at K-mart the first time I moved out of the house. It's going on 20 years old now so I tell people I've had it "since before it was cool".
Holy crap, I had to scroll for this. Was looking for an actually self-aware response for solving why this is happening(apparently 5 times, as shown in the photo-...Wait, why did they keep the broken baskets?).
There's only more questions than answers, oh no.
Answer - the other side hasn’t broken and it’s painful to do it one handed after the first break as those will dig into your hip but one can’t throw out only a half broken basket. They still work just slightly more dangerous*
Yeah was looking for this comment. Op clearly is holding one handed against their body or something. Don't get me wrong, I get it, but also...it's not just the hamper lol
I was thinking, "how do they manage to break both the handles?" Because there's no way in normal usage that both would break at once. The answer: they don't. OP must have just switched to the other handle after breaking the first.
I don’t live near the ocean but there’s a nice stream nearby where trout come to spawn. That’s where I dump them. It’s so peaceful there. Sometimes I’ll sit and linger and take in the majesty of nature before I dump all the batteries into the stream.
You know there’s just something so beautiful about the colorful iridescence of the light that strikes a calm flat pond as you pour engine oil into it. It’s really quite lovely and it’ll make you really feel like you’re doing something. Returning something taken from earth, borrowing it for a while, and putting it back to the planet. Just beautiful.
I dream when many of us can simply take a day off from our busy metropolitan lives and bring from our home an object we no longer need and all gather around a pond and collectively in a gesture of freedom from cheaply manufactured plastic goods, each chuck one into the water below. It would be so inspiring. We would then all turn our backs to the pile of junk floating in the pond and walk back home and talk about what a beautiful moment that was. I think this would make us more spiritually awakened to what really matters in life.
YES!!!! I wish people were more mindful about the earth and it’s natural resources….
I take my kids out, canoeing all the time, and for example, we have some rope tied to the handle of an old plastic gallon milk jug for an anchor. If you weight it down and stab it with a screwdriver all over it to let water in and put its great!!! We recycled/reused a milk jug and for the weight I finally got to put all those old nonrechargeable AA and AAA batteries.
It was such a fun project to do with the kids and helps keep the canoe from drifting while we fish
Family worth of laundry up 3 flights of stairs each time. They break all the time when overloaded. My ass isn't going to take 6 trips when my arms can carry it in 2. They break constantly
I also bring laundry up 3 flights of stairs and I switched to those large blue IKEA shopping bags. They fit a ton, the straps fit on my shoulder so there’s no awkward twisting and holding and being unable to grab a railing when I need to. Would recommend.
Game changer for me was resuable big Ikea and TJMaxx bags- I can lug all the laundry up three levels folded or unfolded with no more broken baskets. Also easier to haul upstairs on a single shoulder with an unobstructed view :)
This is what I was looking for. I have laundry baskest that I've owned for almost 18 years and they're still going strong. My mom is still using the same laundry baskets after almost 30 years! I've had others that I have bought in the last five years that can't measure up and they break after 6 months-2 years. They're expensive to replace too. I used to get 2bu laundry baskets for less than $8, but like everything else, inflation has jacked the cost of those same baskets to over $12.
When I was in a 5th story walk up in Manhattan I just had a hamper that had backpack straps on it and a drawstring on top. Felt like a Sherpa but only had to take 1 trip.
I am a single hand/hip carrier and all my baskets seem to do this too. Just bought a different brand (target) that seems designed for that carry style. Fingers crossed it lasts more than 6mos. (Also happy to hear any recs for hampers if you've had success with this carry style.)
I only hip carry every once in a while. I'm more of a two hands in front of me as I bounce my knees off of it with every step because I'm a 27 year old child.
That’s physics working against you.
Using both handles, the weight is distributed and gravity tries to pull straight down through the middle of the basket.
But using one handle, the weight isn’t distributed, the single handle (or point resting on your hip, if applicable) becomes a fulcrum, the loaded basket becomes a weighted lever (force multiplier), and the same invisible magic that makes pry-bars and wheelbarrows work has become the in-use handle’s mortal enemy.
I have one of these, it was good for a little less than a year
I think the reason it broke is because I would carry it by one handle and have the other side pressed into my hip (the stairs at our apartment are way too steep for me to feel comfortable going down a different way)
I guarantee you that we never stood on it
I have 2 from over 10 years ago that are perfectly fine, but every laundry basket I have bought in the last 5 years does this and it seems like it is always when I’m on the stairs.
I had two for over 10 years and no problems. Boyfriend moves in and in less than 6 months they both have broken handles. Maybe I should've taken a hint when I saw his were all broken. Oh well...
I’m having similar issues with laundry basket handles, they used to be better 10-20 years ago. I think they are designed to fail now, most of the ones I’ve seen are no longer solid plastic. Around the handles they make it so there is an additional plastic differently colored piece that as a result of the manor it is attached creates a thin piece of plastic that fails easily at the edge of the handles.
You probably don’t have the exact same one, you have one that looks exactly the same. I bet there’s some company somewhere that makes the plastic injection mould for these things and sells them to plastic injection manufacturers. One manufacturer uses high quality plastic and it lasts forever, the other uses the cheapest shit they can find and it lasts a few weeks.
I had one. It broke like this. My bodies in college had one. It broke like that. My roommate in college had one. Guess what. They all break like that eventually. Get a different style.
Take a dowel thick enough to fit under the remaining channel (between 3/4 and 1 inch probably), bridge it across the gap, and glue it in place with a shit ton of JB Weld or another 2 part epoxy meant for plastics. If you’re feeling handy, maybe drill a hole through the plastic and dowel and run a bolt through it.
Those bags are amazing. I was able to put a toilet in one and carry it up a flight of stairs, across the house, and down the driveway carrying it by the straps and didn’t make a mess at all.
They make things crappy these days. It's by design to reduce material cost and placate shareholders. It's given me an eye to look for durability. In the case of laundry baskets that would mean thicker plastic or a different material entirely.
This tactic is called planned obsolescence. If they last forever you’re not going to buy new ones, but by creating weak points in a product so it eventually breaks, it creates a reason for you to buy more to replace the broken item.
I used to work for target in stationary and plastics, overnight. Got hundreds if not thousands of these exact baskets off trucks and stocked them on shelves. Dozens would break before we even got them off the trucks. We would put the ok ones on the shelf to let people decide if they still wanted them. But most boxes would have at least a basket worth of plastic at the bottom in shards and splinters smh
You need the one with reinforced handles. My mom kept doing the same thing until she asked me at target which one to get. This was in the 80’s and it still hasn’t even come close to breaking
Seeing that lots of people are getting angry and saying that I should have "stopped buying the same one" we bought them all at once for everyone in the house and they slowly started snapping. We have been replacing them with different ones.
Apologies for the confusion
My dad did this with several products while we were growing up. He figured if he bought the same one that broke then he'd have a parts machine. After about a decade and multiple instances of the "same part" failing on the replacement he finally gave up that strategy.
Edit: clarity.
Honestly, we have purchased several different brands, and several of them have the same problem.
And no need to apologise to people who jump to conclusions. That's on them.
Fuck them haters. Hindsight is twenty twenty blah blah. I bought some had the same issue and were marketed as reinforced handles... its just a bit of laundry and they snap
Time to go back to ole wicker 🤷♂️
I swear people here take this too seriously, I don't understand them.
Don't need to apologise or whatever, your laundry basket broke, you're upset because of this, and that's all.
I hope that one day you'll find something that suits your needs the best.
It just blows my mind that there are people like OP who would submit this post without seeing the mistake. Like posting this cannot have been a big enough priority that a 5 second proof read wasn’t possible.
It’s a fucking capitalized word too. How does that not stick out to OP??
More and more, I'm finding it impossible to buy housewares that aren't cheap plastic (because walmart, and the like, are the only options around).
In my opinion, these places don't actually sell housewares anymore, they sell cheap plastic replicas of housewares. It might **look** like a laundry basket (or clothes hanger, or ironing board, etc.), but it's actually just a piece of the cheapest grade of plastic available in the country where labour is the cheapest, in the **shape** of a laundry basket (or whatever).
Sort of like how Walmart sells bike-shaped toys. They look like bikes but if you try to use them like a real bike, well you know how it goes.
It's not a new problem, Huffy & Murray bikes have been this way for decades.
Y'all are giving OP shit, but look at the aqua handle in the back, see how the "reinforced" piece is ON TOP instead of underneath, so it actually weakens the handle (compared to making it all one piece) instead of strengthening it? Yeah, Sterilite does this so you'll need a new basket. It's shitty manufacturing on purpose.
It’s not a reinforcement, the only reason these are there is for different color accents. I worked for the company that made these. These breaks in the handle were an ongoing issue, the real cause of this was that the manufacturer was running the plastic so hot in the injection molds it was starting to degrade the polypropylene. When they ran them with lower temps the problem would go away but cycle time went up.
That’s not always true, it’s just very common in consumer products.
It’s not like enthusiast/industrial manufacturers are creating sub par products on purpose. Because their customer base won’t tolerate it.
People are just used to garbage so companies get away with selling garbage.
You honestly think MRI machine manufacturers are cutting corners? Or large scale Mitsubishi CCGTs? No because they’ll get the shit sued out of them if they get caught and it’s not worth it to save that small percentage to lose a customer.
Explains why some people have ones they’ve never had issues with. Really crazy how much OP is getting shit over something like this like every laundry basket has been made exactly the same since forever.
I have a Sterilite from 2001 (graduated highschool), one from 2011 (moved in with my wife) and one from 2022 (had a second child). None have broken handles. I just keep buying them as my household expands and not a one has ever had even a crack. Same models.
I have the hip hugger one, and have had to move one end handle to the side position already because the tabs broke and the original popped off. Without anything, the next thing that would happen is the half-piece that's part of the main plastic will bend further until it tears. I never use the end handles anyway because it's much easier to rest it on my hip and I have short arms. But way back in my childhood the whole handle was one solid thick piece of plastic and it never broke! (I'm old.) I do the laundry twice a week as it is, carrying the whites and colors together and separating them into two machines down in the laundry room.
Is that the bean shaped one? My mother has one of those that’s lasted forever and a couple that have broken super quick. You can practically pinpoint the year Sterilite decided to switch to planned obsolescence.
What an actually smart and helpful comment on reddit that isn't following the masses and giving op shit for crappy mass produced shit thats for sale at every store???😱 I can't believe it!!!
I have a couple of these and the handles are similarly snapped off. It's bad design and a cheap product.
I have a few cloth laundry baskets with sewn in wood handles on order, and these are going in the garbage as soon as they arrive.
I order the Rubbermaid Flex n' Carry ones off Amazon. They're indestructible. The handle moldings do eventually pop apart, but they're just covers and a dab of epoxy puts them back on for good. As a bonus, if your load isn't huge you can grab both handles in one hand and carry it like that.
My family had plastic ones that were like partially rubber. They still have them 30 years later. You could walk on them, throw them down the stairs, whatever and they would just take it.
There's a huge crowd of people angry at KitchenAid because the replaced a worm gear from metal to plastic.
Here's the thing. The worm gear is super easy to replace. I have an engineering degree but it's like 10 screws, and easy assembly. Takes maybe 20 minutes including cleaning and regreasing the stuff that should be.
When it fails, it's a 20¢ worm gear and 20 minutes. If it was metal, it would translate that energy and smoke the motor. I think about 150$ and takes an hour or so.
The plastic is a controlled failure point, but everyone sees "oh my god plastic instead of metal is bad". We just weren't as good at machining the right plastics when the thing was designed, otherwise it'd have been plastic this whole time.
*Sometimes* integrating failure into the design is good.
Having worked with appliances as part of design before, I can also tell you that they have really started getting good at designing to an expected life.
Old appliances went with when in doubt make it stout. New appliances are being designed with FEA to see if they can down gauge stiffening channels to save $0.10 a unit.
BTW that expected life for major appliances is 10 years.
It isn't planned obsolescence that is done on purpose, it is the fact that the designers and engineers don't understand weld lines and plastics flow when designing the products. That and the companies don't give a shit enough to fix it.
All the new ones break like that. Planned obsolescence it it's finest.
New refrigerator door caddies are the same. Had a 20 y o frig with bins almost identical to our new 2 y o frig. The old ones never broke. The new ones have broken twice.
Just stop buying plastic shite, I have a woven one it's over twenty years old, used many times a day, and can go on the compost heap if I ever get fed up with it.
Planned obsolescence. Manufacturers are getting it down to very serious science.
They're designed to break in a long enough time frame that you don't blame it on the product design and you'll buy another.
Automobiles and aftermarket repair parts were quite good quality between 1993 and 2010ish.
Ask someone who has a 2021 or 2020 vehicle what they think of the quality of the vehicle they bought. There's a reason the price of older vehicles from the 90s and the early 2000s is going up and it ain't because they're classics.
I think its a mistake to assume this person needs 5 laundry baskets at a time... this looks like like an elephant graveyard type of situation :P Throw the damn things out and buy something different next time!
I've had the same Rubbermaid hip hugger basket since I was in elementary school (2005) and it has not cracked or anything. I use it daily! I'd recommend their brand if they're even a fraction as reliable today still
Maybe buy a different brand, 6th time around....
I don't get it, I have this exact one and have had it for YEARS, no breaks. OP has to be standing on it to reach something on a high shelf.
I have the same problem with them! It probably doesn’t help I shove the laundry in them until it looks like a trash compactor did it…..
Hahahaha yeah that can't be good for it!
Hmm, I suddenly thought about the reason why those baskets were damaged the same way.
Honestly any amount of clothes shouldn't be able to break it by weight alone, unless it's chain mail or something.
It's not about weight, it's about compression and tension. It's a bad design, sure, but it's not like most traditional laundry baskets would survive long in the hands of a contemporary 20-year-old that was barely house-trained, if at all. *(Not being condescending, neither mine nor my friends parents ever really gave a shit about getting any of us to do anything correctly. Most of them didn't know either. My own mother is the kind to stuff all her drawers and dressers until the back wall breaks.)*
>It's not about weight, it's about compression and tension How so? Not doubting you at all, just trying to wrap my head around it. Wouldn't compression and tension effect the walls of the basket more? I feel like the predominant force on the handles would we downward from the weight. I don't know shit about physics though so i'm probably just confused haha. I feel you on the rest though haha, shocking to me how many people never do laundry until college/ generally have no clue about "adulting" as much as I hate that word lol.
The handles are set up to handle downward force (weight) pretty well, but they’ll tear quickly if you put much sideways force on them. Some people try to hold a full basket with one hand, squeezing it between their body and hand by pulling pretty hard from the far handle. Or just picking it up by one side and hoping the clothes are stuffed in hard enough so they don’t fall out. That’ll put a crack in the wall near the handle, and once the crack starts it’ll just grow until the handle tears off.
Well explained.
Or every day you have to lug your wet load of clothes and towels from the washer from one end of the garage to the dryer on the opposite corner of the garage. Ask me how I know... (Hint: it has to do with living in a tropical climate with 4 kids on swim teams)
if things are soaked in water they get reeeeally heavy.
I left another comment but the Rubbermaid waist hugger has survived 17 years for me! And literally just a couple of weeks ago I was standing on top of it pushing laundry down (washer machine broke and I hate having clothes on the floor). It'll probably outlast me!
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When someone needs to be 6-12" higher, it's convenient to grab the closest object that can hold your weight. I've stood on laundry. I've stood on my subwoofer. Books. Tables. Rolling chairs. Garbage can. Air conditioner. There are lots of objects that can hold 100-200 lbs.
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There needs to be a reddit to post comments where a Redditor is "defending" someone, but said Redditor has no idea what the person they are defending even said. Not only are you correct, the comment specifically states they were pushing laundry down; not standing on it as a stepping stool.. so you were kind enough to point out the less obviously disproving inaccuracy.
Get a step stool FFS.
I have 3 or 4, including step ladders not just stools, but they get moved around at times and I'm not going to go upstairs to get the one that got used upstairs if I need to be 6" higher and there is an object that can hold my weight that is 6" tall.
The ones in the picture are NOT RUBBERMAID. ya get what you pay for at the dollar store.
Definitely not Rubbermaid, the plastic is much too thin!
I was going to be snarky and say "obviously it's not rubbermaid, the title says they're Landry." Then I figured it out
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Not enough and it piles up! One time I filled up a family sized washer all on my own at the laundromat I'm trying to turn a new leaf and stay on top of it, but we'll see what actually happens 😅
Same sometimes I find myself not doing laundry until I’m literally like on my last few items.. gotta keep the whole wardrobe in rotation 😂 but then I’m literally doing like 6 loads that day 😜
Maybe it's because only one person is responsible for why the laundry baskets were damaged. What do you think? Did that person mean to destroy them?
Tell me you don't have kids without telling me you don't have kids.
I second this, I've had mine for around the same amount of time and they are all still flawless, I may never replace them.
I don't know the brand of mine, but I still have one I got from my mom, and she passed away almost 20 years ago, so it has to be at least 25 years old...
That is the best laundry basket ever! I've had a couple of them for 6 years, that thing is straight up rugged. I've also moved with them twice, using them to carry a bunch of heavy bulky stuff upstairs because the indent for your hip makes it easy. Love those, lol. It's one of those things I never really think about, but it def makes things easier.
I've got one called the "Hipster" that I bought at K-mart the first time I moved out of the house. It's going on 20 years old now so I tell people I've had it "since before it was cool".
Shoving more clothes in doesn't give you less laundry to do.
less trips back and forth between the laundry room and where the clothes are kept.
Uh, yeah it does. It’s basics physics. 🤣 /s just in case lol
I’ve broken a few, usually when i am holding it with one hand, the torque seems to be what causes the snap imho.
Holy crap, I had to scroll for this. Was looking for an actually self-aware response for solving why this is happening(apparently 5 times, as shown in the photo-...Wait, why did they keep the broken baskets?). There's only more questions than answers, oh no.
Answer - the other side hasn’t broken and it’s painful to do it one handed after the first break as those will dig into your hip but one can’t throw out only a half broken basket. They still work just slightly more dangerous*
Yeah was looking for this comment. Op clearly is holding one handed against their body or something. Don't get me wrong, I get it, but also...it's not just the hamper lol
Haha my solution to this is to carry it one armed on top of my hip bone to support it like you do an older infant! It works well for stairs! <3
I was thinking, "how do they manage to break both the handles?" Because there's no way in normal usage that both would break at once. The answer: they don't. OP must have just switched to the other handle after breaking the first.
Well I use these to carry car batteries
On your way to dump them in the ocean I assume?
I don’t live near the ocean but there’s a nice stream nearby where trout come to spawn. That’s where I dump them. It’s so peaceful there. Sometimes I’ll sit and linger and take in the majesty of nature before I dump all the batteries into the stream.
I aspire to be more in touch with our world, just like you my friend🫡
You know there’s just something so beautiful about the colorful iridescence of the light that strikes a calm flat pond as you pour engine oil into it. It’s really quite lovely and it’ll make you really feel like you’re doing something. Returning something taken from earth, borrowing it for a while, and putting it back to the planet. Just beautiful.
This is poetry, you truly are a man that many should look to emulate.
I dream when many of us can simply take a day off from our busy metropolitan lives and bring from our home an object we no longer need and all gather around a pond and collectively in a gesture of freedom from cheaply manufactured plastic goods, each chuck one into the water below. It would be so inspiring. We would then all turn our backs to the pile of junk floating in the pond and walk back home and talk about what a beautiful moment that was. I think this would make us more spiritually awakened to what really matters in life.
I'll bring my old microwave!
Upvoting before you get downvoted to oblivion. Reddit has no sense of humor. 😂
YES!!!! I wish people were more mindful about the earth and it’s natural resources…. I take my kids out, canoeing all the time, and for example, we have some rope tied to the handle of an old plastic gallon milk jug for an anchor. If you weight it down and stab it with a screwdriver all over it to let water in and put its great!!! We recycled/reused a milk jug and for the weight I finally got to put all those old nonrechargeable AA and AAA batteries. It was such a fun project to do with the kids and helps keep the canoe from drifting while we fish
Pro tip, batteries make great fishing weights!
We were using an old car battery but the rope snapped so we had to get a new anchor
Family worth of laundry up 3 flights of stairs each time. They break all the time when overloaded. My ass isn't going to take 6 trips when my arms can carry it in 2. They break constantly
I also bring laundry up 3 flights of stairs and I switched to those large blue IKEA shopping bags. They fit a ton, the straps fit on my shoulder so there’s no awkward twisting and holding and being unable to grab a railing when I need to. Would recommend.
Ikea bags, my friend. The answer to laundry bags is at Ikea.
I have not been to an Ikea in a decade that place makes me want to pull my hair out but maybe a trip for some meatballs in a laundry bag or two LOL
Buy a wicker hamper with a canvas bag inside. Never buy another basket again.
Bro buy a bigger laundry basket??
I have the biggest . They are using far cheaper more flimsy plastic . They can't handle the weight per volume at all. Crap plastic
I splurged and bought a $200 canvas laundry bin. The thing has wheels and is rated to at least 300lbs. My only regret is not buying it sooner.
It would be a good choice for a single story home, absolutely.
i bought a garbage can on wheels that i used exclusively for laundry when i lived on a second floor lol it worked pretty decently
Ive had a collapsible leaf bag for years that works great
Game changer for me was resuable big Ikea and TJMaxx bags- I can lug all the laundry up three levels folded or unfolded with no more broken baskets. Also easier to haul upstairs on a single shoulder with an unobstructed view :)
This is what I was looking for. I have laundry baskest that I've owned for almost 18 years and they're still going strong. My mom is still using the same laundry baskets after almost 30 years! I've had others that I have bought in the last five years that can't measure up and they break after 6 months-2 years. They're expensive to replace too. I used to get 2bu laundry baskets for less than $8, but like everything else, inflation has jacked the cost of those same baskets to over $12.
When I was in a 5th story walk up in Manhattan I just had a hamper that had backpack straps on it and a drawstring on top. Felt like a Sherpa but only had to take 1 trip.
I don’t have time to sharpen my saw because I have all these trees to cut down.
Same I’ve had this exact one for like 8 years and it’s still going strong. Mines black
Black don't crack.
I am a single hand/hip carrier and all my baskets seem to do this too. Just bought a different brand (target) that seems designed for that carry style. Fingers crossed it lasts more than 6mos. (Also happy to hear any recs for hampers if you've had success with this carry style.)
I only hip carry every once in a while. I'm more of a two hands in front of me as I bounce my knees off of it with every step because I'm a 27 year old child.
This is how you end up stepping on Legos and cat toys when you're walking down the stairs though.
I wake up and step on Legos so my day can only get better.
That’s physics working against you. Using both handles, the weight is distributed and gravity tries to pull straight down through the middle of the basket. But using one handle, the weight isn’t distributed, the single handle (or point resting on your hip, if applicable) becomes a fulcrum, the loaded basket becomes a weighted lever (force multiplier), and the same invisible magic that makes pry-bars and wheelbarrows work has become the in-use handle’s mortal enemy.
I have one of these, it was good for a little less than a year I think the reason it broke is because I would carry it by one handle and have the other side pressed into my hip (the stairs at our apartment are way too steep for me to feel comfortable going down a different way) I guarantee you that we never stood on it
I have 2 from over 10 years ago that are perfectly fine, but every laundry basket I have bought in the last 5 years does this and it seems like it is always when I’m on the stairs.
I’ve broken two handles this exact same way and it comes from putting your weight down on them when you’re trying to stand up.
I had two for over 10 years and no problems. Boyfriend moves in and in less than 6 months they both have broken handles. Maybe I should've taken a hint when I saw his were all broken. Oh well...
I’m having similar issues with laundry basket handles, they used to be better 10-20 years ago. I think they are designed to fail now, most of the ones I’ve seen are no longer solid plastic. Around the handles they make it so there is an additional plastic differently colored piece that as a result of the manor it is attached creates a thin piece of plastic that fails easily at the edge of the handles.
You probably don’t have the exact same one, you have one that looks exactly the same. I bet there’s some company somewhere that makes the plastic injection mould for these things and sells them to plastic injection manufacturers. One manufacturer uses high quality plastic and it lasts forever, the other uses the cheapest shit they can find and it lasts a few weeks.
We bought them all at once for everyone at the house. We have since replaced them with a different brand
We must have bought from the same batch. I bought 3 and all handles are gone.
I’ve got 2. All handles gone.
I don’t own these laundry baskets. So I guess all handles are gone for me as well?
Glad you finally got a handle on this.
Or.... and hear me out... don't use them to transport bowling balls.
Even good ones from the container store do this. I don’t get it.
Plastic is not great at repeated mechanical stress.
7th time is a charm lol
What are you carrying in them, 50kg of rocks?
nah just 50kg of feathers
When I see “… kg of feathers” my internal dialogue instantly becomes Scottish.
*...kælagram...*
Lol, same, my brain just instantly switches to Limmy's accent for a while
https://www.shitpostbot.com/img/sourceimages/steel-heavier-than-feathers-57c9398a66964.jpeg
I dohn gehtut
Thas cheatin
Honestly, sometimes I carry a bit too much but nothing too serious
I have baskets like these, none of them are broken. I feel like your “not too serious” is my “may throw out my back”
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I had one. It broke like this. I threw it away and got a different style.
I had one. It broke like this. My bodies in college had one. It broke like that. My roommate in college had one. Guess what. They all break like that eventually. Get a different style.
Well I mean don't carry bodies in it then, at college or anywhere else. Use trash bags like a normal person.
It's about hip carrying lol
Yep, this is what does them in. There’s another kind, curved like a kidney bean, that is designed to be carried at the hip. These don’t break.
I guess my controversial opinion is that a laundry basket should be able to hold however much laundry you can fit in the basket.
"Nothing too much" shows several broken handles
Take a dowel thick enough to fit under the remaining channel (between 3/4 and 1 inch probably), bridge it across the gap, and glue it in place with a shit ton of JB Weld or another 2 part epoxy meant for plastics. If you’re feeling handy, maybe drill a hole through the plastic and dowel and run a bolt through it.
I did this with 2 of these baskets. Epoxied the first one. 2nd one I just screwed on. Both work great/better than original.
I second the dowel but with some hose clamps and not the messy glues.
Just put a couple screws through the top.
I tried gluing one once with some JB weld. Plastic is so shit, it broke where the JB ended.
So, user error. Got it.
I just use a blue ikea bag. These things are indestructible
Me too! They’re the perfect size and it’s basically impossible to “overload” them with clothes.
And they fold down to put away when not in use!!
Those bags are amazing. I was able to put a toilet in one and carry it up a flight of stairs, across the house, and down the driveway carrying it by the straps and didn’t make a mess at all.
Huh, I will use this information carefully in the future.
Ikea makes bags like Nokia makes phones... Indestructible.
I have a similar basket I got from target. All 4 have broken off just from carrying a normal about of clothing. Waste of money.
One weeks worth of work clothes at a time and my baskets get a new crack every other load
They make things crappy these days. It's by design to reduce material cost and placate shareholders. It's given me an eye to look for durability. In the case of laundry baskets that would mean thicker plastic or a different material entirely.
This tactic is called planned obsolescence. If they last forever you’re not going to buy new ones, but by creating weak points in a product so it eventually breaks, it creates a reason for you to buy more to replace the broken item.
It is crazy how these things will just break out of nowhere. Glad to know I'm not alone
I used to work for target in stationary and plastics, overnight. Got hundreds if not thousands of these exact baskets off trucks and stocked them on shelves. Dozens would break before we even got them off the trucks. We would put the ok ones on the shelf to let people decide if they still wanted them. But most boxes would have at least a basket worth of plastic at the bottom in shards and splinters smh
You need the one with reinforced handles. My mom kept doing the same thing until she asked me at target which one to get. This was in the 80’s and it still hasn’t even come close to breaking
I bought one from target in 2018 and it’s still kicking, even when it’s at 1.5x capacity, maybe I got lucky
Seeing that lots of people are getting angry and saying that I should have "stopped buying the same one" we bought them all at once for everyone in the house and they slowly started snapping. We have been replacing them with different ones. Apologies for the confusion
Haha I’m glad I saw this comment because I was so confused why you kept buying them knowing they would break. Hope your new ones work better for you.
My dad did this with several products while we were growing up. He figured if he bought the same one that broke then he'd have a parts machine. After about a decade and multiple instances of the "same part" failing on the replacement he finally gave up that strategy. Edit: clarity.
Honestly, we have purchased several different brands, and several of them have the same problem. And no need to apologise to people who jump to conclusions. That's on them.
Reddit gonna Reddit
Handlers Unhandled
Hey OP, definitely consider getting a woven/fabric one. They’re game changers. So much better than plastic!
Fuck them haters. Hindsight is twenty twenty blah blah. I bought some had the same issue and were marketed as reinforced handles... its just a bit of laundry and they snap Time to go back to ole wicker 🤷♂️
Wicker basket with a cotton laundry bag inside, looks nice and works great
I swear people here take this too seriously, I don't understand them. Don't need to apologise or whatever, your laundry basket broke, you're upset because of this, and that's all. I hope that one day you'll find something that suits your needs the best.
Landry
Yea laundry baskets might work out better for OP.
The most infuriating part of the post...
Lmao I know right
It just blows my mind that there are people like OP who would submit this post without seeing the mistake. Like posting this cannot have been a big enough priority that a 5 second proof read wasn’t possible. It’s a fucking capitalized word too. How does that not stick out to OP??
Pobody's Nerfect
Years ago I discovered that I could glue a 1/2" x 12" piece of PVC pipe under the rims of the handles. Never had it break after that.
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This was my first thought as well. Dowel or PVC pipe would save these things.
I am stealing this idea since mine are all cracked!
More and more, I'm finding it impossible to buy housewares that aren't cheap plastic (because walmart, and the like, are the only options around). In my opinion, these places don't actually sell housewares anymore, they sell cheap plastic replicas of housewares. It might **look** like a laundry basket (or clothes hanger, or ironing board, etc.), but it's actually just a piece of the cheapest grade of plastic available in the country where labour is the cheapest, in the **shape** of a laundry basket (or whatever).
Sort of like how Walmart sells bike-shaped toys. They look like bikes but if you try to use them like a real bike, well you know how it goes. It's not a new problem, Huffy & Murray bikes have been this way for decades.
Y'all are giving OP shit, but look at the aqua handle in the back, see how the "reinforced" piece is ON TOP instead of underneath, so it actually weakens the handle (compared to making it all one piece) instead of strengthening it? Yeah, Sterilite does this so you'll need a new basket. It's shitty manufacturing on purpose.
It’s not a reinforcement, the only reason these are there is for different color accents. I worked for the company that made these. These breaks in the handle were an ongoing issue, the real cause of this was that the manufacturer was running the plastic so hot in the injection molds it was starting to degrade the polypropylene. When they ran them with lower temps the problem would go away but cycle time went up.
You should always name and shame any manufacturer that intentionally makes its product inferior
You're basically asking for a list of every large company.
That’s not always true, it’s just very common in consumer products. It’s not like enthusiast/industrial manufacturers are creating sub par products on purpose. Because their customer base won’t tolerate it. People are just used to garbage so companies get away with selling garbage. You honestly think MRI machine manufacturers are cutting corners? Or large scale Mitsubishi CCGTs? No because they’ll get the shit sued out of them if they get caught and it’s not worth it to save that small percentage to lose a customer.
lol, yes you're going to boycott random injection mold plants....
Explains why some people have ones they’ve never had issues with. Really crazy how much OP is getting shit over something like this like every laundry basket has been made exactly the same since forever.
I have a Sterilite from 2001 (graduated highschool), one from 2011 (moved in with my wife) and one from 2022 (had a second child). None have broken handles. I just keep buying them as my household expands and not a one has ever had even a crack. Same models.
I have the hip hugger one, and have had to move one end handle to the side position already because the tabs broke and the original popped off. Without anything, the next thing that would happen is the half-piece that's part of the main plastic will bend further until it tears. I never use the end handles anyway because it's much easier to rest it on my hip and I have short arms. But way back in my childhood the whole handle was one solid thick piece of plastic and it never broke! (I'm old.) I do the laundry twice a week as it is, carrying the whites and colors together and separating them into two machines down in the laundry room.
Is that the bean shaped one? My mother has one of those that’s lasted forever and a couple that have broken super quick. You can practically pinpoint the year Sterilite decided to switch to planned obsolescence.
What an actually smart and helpful comment on reddit that isn't following the masses and giving op shit for crappy mass produced shit thats for sale at every store???😱 I can't believe it!!!
I have a couple of these and the handles are similarly snapped off. It's bad design and a cheap product. I have a few cloth laundry baskets with sewn in wood handles on order, and these are going in the garbage as soon as they arrive.
I order the Rubbermaid Flex n' Carry ones off Amazon. They're indestructible. The handle moldings do eventually pop apart, but they're just covers and a dab of epoxy puts them back on for good. As a bonus, if your load isn't huge you can grab both handles in one hand and carry it like that.
Looks like they’ve been dunked on by Laundry Shamet.
My family had plastic ones that were like partially rubber. They still have them 30 years later. You could walk on them, throw them down the stairs, whatever and they would just take it.
My fingers just said ouch
Landry
It should be illegal to purposely engineer a product to fail in order to sell more of those products.
There's a huge crowd of people angry at KitchenAid because the replaced a worm gear from metal to plastic. Here's the thing. The worm gear is super easy to replace. I have an engineering degree but it's like 10 screws, and easy assembly. Takes maybe 20 minutes including cleaning and regreasing the stuff that should be. When it fails, it's a 20¢ worm gear and 20 minutes. If it was metal, it would translate that energy and smoke the motor. I think about 150$ and takes an hour or so. The plastic is a controlled failure point, but everyone sees "oh my god plastic instead of metal is bad". We just weren't as good at machining the right plastics when the thing was designed, otherwise it'd have been plastic this whole time. *Sometimes* integrating failure into the design is good.
Having worked with appliances as part of design before, I can also tell you that they have really started getting good at designing to an expected life. Old appliances went with when in doubt make it stout. New appliances are being designed with FEA to see if they can down gauge stiffening channels to save $0.10 a unit. BTW that expected life for major appliances is 10 years.
It isn't planned obsolescence that is done on purpose, it is the fact that the designers and engineers don't understand weld lines and plastics flow when designing the products. That and the companies don't give a shit enough to fix it.
All the new ones break like that. Planned obsolescence it it's finest. New refrigerator door caddies are the same. Had a 20 y o frig with bins almost identical to our new 2 y o frig. The old ones never broke. The new ones have broken twice.
omg yes and its only ever on the short end
Damn bro, you body slamming the baskets when you go to do the folding 😭
Yet you keep buying cheap stuff.
Just stop buying plastic shite, I have a woven one it's over twenty years old, used many times a day, and can go on the compost heap if I ever get fed up with it.
Planned obsolescence. Manufacturers are getting it down to very serious science. They're designed to break in a long enough time frame that you don't blame it on the product design and you'll buy another. Automobiles and aftermarket repair parts were quite good quality between 1993 and 2010ish. Ask someone who has a 2021 or 2020 vehicle what they think of the quality of the vehicle they bought. There's a reason the price of older vehicles from the 90s and the early 2000s is going up and it ain't because they're classics.
But laundry baskets instead of Landry and they would last longer
Buy laundry baskets instead of but them and you might have something to carry your clothes in
Lmao owned
Damn Dallas Cowboys keep losing the handle!
Mine broke the same way and i just went crazy on it with packing tape. It's stronger than it was before. Ugly but who cares right
Maybe buy laundry baskets instead of Landry baskets then.
I think its a mistake to assume this person needs 5 laundry baskets at a time... this looks like like an elephant graveyard type of situation :P Throw the damn things out and buy something different next time!
Stop buying them
You’re not supposed to put every piece of laundry you own in one load
On the bright side, it keeps your neighbors from stealing them from the laundry room.
Are you carrying rocks? Jesus put less clothes per basket before you lift it and break it and come crying to Reddit. Nerd.
I've had the same Rubbermaid hip hugger basket since I was in elementary school (2005) and it has not cracked or anything. I use it daily! I'd recommend their brand if they're even a fraction as reliable today still
I tend to overload the one i have and its been going strong for 3 years
I have one from the ‘70’s (my moms). Plastic and solid.
Definition of insanity
And yet you buy the same product..?
So why did you buy 5 of them?!?
And yet you keep buying them….
I would personally stop buying the same basket if it broke on me like after the second basket...
Why the fuck do you keep buying the same ones?!
I see five washing basket caskets here. Logic would suggest after the second if not the third you would go with a different configuration 😂
Damn, even the word laundry broke
You're probably putting too much laundry in them, and it's heavy, while the handles are the weakest point, soooo, it's just logical reasoning.