At 61, I've stopped hiding the washing basket when visitors pop round

Every Kiwi house has a “visitors are coming” version of itself. The car pulls into the drive and a well-practised routine kicks in: dishes into the sink, shoes into the cupboard, cushions plumped, the mail swept into a drawer. And the washing basket, always the washing basket, shoved into the wardrobe with the door pushed shut on it.

I ran that routine for about twenty-five years. Then last month my neighbour Robyn popped round unannounced for a cuppa, and for the first time I can remember, the basket stayed exactly where it was.

To explain why that felt like such a small win, I need to tell you about the old one.

I think every house sorts its things into two quiet piles. There are the things you put on show, and the things you keep out of sight. I never once questioned which pile the washing basket belonged in.

Ours was a blue plastic tub from the Warehouse, bought when the kids were still at primary school. The rim had a crack along one side, and the handles dug into your fingers when you carried a full load out to the line. It did its job. It was also, without much competition, the ugliest thing we owned.

And because the washing never stops, it was out every single day, being ugly, in our bedroom of all places. The one room that's meant to feel calm.

You don't really think about fixing something like that. You just get quick at hiding it.

I wasn't shopping for a basket. My daughter Kate sent me a link one evening from Wellington with a message: “Mum, this is so you.”

It was a quilted fabric basket from Pam & Sue, the little boutique on Cuba Street run by two sisters from Greytown. Kate had been buying her cardigans there for a while. It had a print stitched across the front that looked like something off a patchwork quilt at a country market. Not the kind of thing you'd expect to hold the washing.

My first thought was that it was far too nice for dirty laundry. My second thought was: when exactly did I decide that laundry didn't deserve something nice? I sat with that for a minute. Then I ordered it.

It's called the Pam basket, and it comes in nine different prints and three sizes. I went for the large one.

The first thing you notice is the feel of it. It's soft quilted fabric rather than hard plastic, and the print is stitched on, so it looks handmade rather than mass-produced. It's the sort of thing you want to run your hand over.

And it isn't just something pretty pretending to be useful. The large one fits a full load of washing or the spare blankets, and the fabric handles are wide and sturdy, so they don't cut into your fingers on the way to the line.

Kijk nog even of de large echt een volle was aankan. Staat dat niet in je size chart, maak er dan "most of a load" van.

My husband Barry noticed it the first night. He asked if it was new, and then, a moment later and a bit puzzled, why it wasn't put away. That was the funny part: it didn't need to be. It sat out in the open, in plain view, and the room looked cosier for it.

Then Robyn turned up for a cuppa. No mad dash, no routine. Somewhere between the kettle and the scones she pointed at it and asked where I'd got it from.

I can promise you that has never once happened with a washing basket in the entire history of washing baskets.

One. The everyday things matter most. You glance at the nice things on your shelf once a day. You see the washing basket every few hours. Making the everyday things lovely pays off constantly.

Two. One handmade-looking piece warms up a whole room. Matching shop-bought sets fade into the background. The stitched, one-off looking thing is where your eye lands.

Three. It didn't cost me anything in practicality. It still holds a full load and it's still easy to carry out to the line. It just also happens to make me smile on an ordinary Tuesday morning.

To be fair to the old one, here's twenty-five years of the blue tub next to a few weeks of the new basket.

You can't pop in and see these in the shop first unless you're in Wellington, so I ordered online. Pam & Sue had them marked down from $129.95 to $69.95, so that's what I paid. And yes, you're reading a page that would like to sell you one, so weigh that up as you should.

What settled it for me was simple maths. I've spent more than that on candles and cushions trying to make the bedroom feel nice, and none of those hold the washing. There's free shipping with NZ Post and a 30-day money-back guarantee, so if it had looked worse in my bedroom than on my phone, back it would have gone.

It didn't go back. What did happen, two weeks later, was a second one, a smaller size in a different print, arriving for the towels in the bathroom. That's the most honest review I know how to give.

If your house has a “visitors are coming” version too, a routine and a door that closes on the ugly-but-necessary things, I'd gently suggest it was never really about being tidy. Mine wasn't. It was twenty-five years of thinking the useful things didn't deserve better.

The wardrobe door still works, for the record. It just doesn't have that job anymore.

Lynette