When my wife and I first got married, we had one of those 3 part laundry organizers that we used to divide up our dirty laundry. It was a cheaper one with a plastic pipe type frame, and mesh bags for the divided hamper sections. It was very practical and functional having our laundry pre-sorted before washing, but it eventually succumbed to our daily use (and also doubling as a cat nap hammock), and we had to trash it.

Flash forward about four or five years, and I am ready for the days of pre-sorted laundry again, especially since we now have added our daughter's laundry to the mix. Over Christmas vacation, I decided it was time to make one for myself. We have been remodeling our house since we moved in about 9 months ago, and I have accumulated a fair amount of scrap plywood and lumber, so I decided I could make it without buying any of the wood.

Initially my plan was just to make a simple rack that three standard sized laundry baskets could slide in and out of with relative ease. I pocket screwed this rack together pretty quickly, and before sanding and painting it, I decided to use it for a little while to see if it functioned like we need it to, or if it was a big waste of time.

The original design before partially disassembling to add the rollouts.

It turns out, I loved the three basket concept, and the large empty top for sorting and extra space in the closet. What I didn't like was the baskets falling off of the wooden rails. After talking with a friend of mine about the project, he had the great idea of dropping the baskets into rollouts on drawer slides. I decided this was the perfect solution, and so I began to modify the design to incorporate the rollouts.

I went and picked up some inexpensive epoxy coated drawer slides from Lowe's and started disassembling the original hamper. I started by mounting the slides right above where the old rails were, giving me the same spacing between the baskets.

Next, I began making the rollouts. I took some scrap plywood, and ripped enough pieces for the sides, front and back for 3 rollouts.

I pocket screwed these together, making four rectangles, and then screwed the other half of the slides to the bottom of each side.

Then, I popped them into the rack to test out the fit and slides. Everything checks out, so I moved onto the plywood shelves to hold the baskets.

I needed a cutout for the basket to drop through the shelf into, so I flipped one of the baskets over, and traced the top outline onto the plywood. Then I free handed a line offset 1" inside of the outline, which gave me a ledge for the basket handles to sit on. I cut out the new shape with a jigsaw, cleaned it up on the router table with a round-over bit, and then traced it onto the next two pieces and repeated the process.

With the shelves and cutouts done, I moved onto making the rollout fronts. I had an old pine shelf from an armoire, so I cut this up into the three solid fronts. After rounding the edges on the router table, I sanded them down, and clamped them to the rollouts and attached them with the screws through the backside.

Now with the fronts attached, I reattached the top, and tested everything out again.

With the hamper built, I began filling holes and sanding for paint. My wife ended up painting the whole thing white with some leftover paint from our kitchen renovation, and it is back in action. We now have a very functional laundry hamper that makes it very easy to presort our laundry. There is space on top for the 'transport' basket to carry dirty loads to and from the laundry room.

If you found this useful, but have more questions please feel free to shoot me an email! I may put together some as built plans with measurements in the future.