Whether you wash your clothes in a washing machine at home or the laundromat, you need a laundry hamper to keep the week's dirty linens contained. When it does its job well, a hamper blends right into the space where it's stored, helps keep your space organized, and allows you to transport your laundry to the wash without a hassle.
If you've been hanging on to the same, too-small hamper that you've had since your dorm room days, it's time to clean up your act and get a model that better suits your style and home needs now. These laundry hampers are a great place to start your search.
The Best Laundry Hampers
What to Consider
Size
You always want to check the dimensions of your laundry hamper before you buy to ensure that it’ll fit in the desired location. Ideally, you also want it to hold enough laundry so that it doesn’t feel like it reaches max capacity every day, but this will widely vary based on the size of your household. If your home has multiple levels, it’s a good idea to have at least one hamper on each level where bedrooms are located so that laundry can get consolidated more easily.
Portability
How you transport your clothes to the washer is another consideration. Unless your hamper is placed close to your washer and dryer unit, you may choose to wheel or pick up the hamper from one location to another or use removable inserts to transport your laundry loads more easily. Ideally, moving the clothes to the wash should be quick and painless, and not a chore in and of itself.
Design features
Along with portability features like wheels, side handles, and removable inserts, we also think that an opaque build, dividers for light and dark clothing, and a lid all contribute to a laundry hamper's usefulness.
In this guide, we generally shied away from all-transparent or mesh laundry hampers, because although they are very affordable, they are easy to break or rip when carrying and add a lot of visual clutter. And while not all of our hampers have lids, we think they're an important feature for keeping smells and clutter contained (and when the lid can't fit on the hamper, you'll instantly know it's time to do laundry!).
How We Chose
There's a lot of subjective wiggle room when it comes to choosing the best laundry hamper for your home. All of these laundry hampers are well-rated by reviewers for their style and ease of use, and all of them have at least one special design feature to help make your chore day go a little smoother.
No longer should your laundry hamper be an afterthought! These eight laundry hampers conveniently corral your dirty clothes while helping your home stay neat and organized.