The way we do laundry doesn't make much sense. We collect all of our dirty clothes in a basket and let them sit there until the basket is full. We then have to carry them to a device that washes them, move them to another device to dry them, and then fold them and carry them back to where we store them. The traditional washing machine not only makes the washing process inefficient, it also makes it long and difficult to just wash a few items. So I began thinking: how can this process be improved?
I started by imagining a small washing machine that would fit next to a wardrobe or dresser. This way, clothing could simply be tossed into the basket and quickly washed. The problem with this, however, is that drying clothes in a traditional style washer is a challenge. I decided to hang dry the clothes, because they could be quickly dried overnight to allow for a wash every day. Using the traditional spin wash, however, made hang drying very difficult, as the clothes would get tangled and could not be easily be separated. I came up with multiple designs for a basket that would spin the clothes through a bucket of water with the clothes already clipped to a system that would raise them for drying. I also designed a basket that would separate each individual item so that they could not tangle with others. This system, however, would not have been able to properly hang clothes to avoid wrinkles. I decided that the easiest way to have clothes end up hang-drying the right way was to put them in the machine the same way. This meant moving completely away from the traditional washing machine.
If the clothes were to be put into the machine on hangars, there couldn’t be a spin cycle involved. I first designed a system where you would hang each item of clothing to a system that would lower them into a bucket of water for cleaning. However, I realized that it would be better to spray-wash the clothes instead of submerging them, because this design would be able to recycle water. I imagined a device that would lift an outfit of clothes through a set of sprayers, and then once the wash cycle was complete, the clothes would simply hang dry. I finally started the building process, and successfully installed a sump pump to send water through the tubing. Although I had difficulty designing the system that would raise the clothes up, which is what brought me to my final design. This design is much simpler because it has fewer moving parts, and creates an easy and efficient wash process for the user. Moving forward, I would create a narrower cabinet that would fit in bedrooms or hotels, and possibly create an all-plastic design that could be kept in a bathroom and easily stored.