Guopeng Liang’s finalist entry in Electrolux’s Design Lab 2008 is another example of simple ingenuity. There’s no radical new washing technology implied, nor some fancy eco-friendly water-saving technique. All it does is wait until it contains a certain weight of clothing, then do a basic (presumably cold) wash. In the meantime, it sucks air through the clothes, ensuring they don’t spread any unpleasant odors as the pile builds. From the designer:

“…today, people store their clothes in a laundry hamper until it fills up, then carry the basket to the laundry room, wash them, come back, take them out, throw them back into the hamper, carry them to a clothesline and then hang them out. I believe that iBasket offers a much more convenient alternative.”

It also instant-messages you to tell you what it’s up to. For civilized people, it might seem a purposeless appliance. But for those with neither hamper nor washing machine — think disgusting college students — why not?

Laundry basket keeps bad smells and also washes your clothes: [via]