Foldimate wants to help with laundry — but not fitted sheets

Hate folding laundry? There’s a robot for that!

For as long as homes and families have existed, so has laundry – and the complaints about folding it.

Meet the Foldimate, a small cabinet that promises to eliminate one of the most dreaded and un-fun household chores.

Based in Oak Park, California, Folidmate wants to give people back some of their precious time.

The Foldimate works by clipping clothes or towels — but not fitted sheets, unmentionables or baby clothes— onto a conveyor belt. Magical machination comes in and bing bang boom everything’s folded nice and neat, collected into a drawer that notifies you when it’s full and ready to be unloaded. Open a door, take the clothes out and put the laundry away.

No fitted sheets though, huh? “Eventually we’ll get there,” says company rep Debbie Cohn-Abravanel.

The handy little helper will set you back about $1,000 ($980USD) and won’t be shipping until 2019, and as the video shows there’s some question over how well it works right now. But it’s awfully enticing to think about all the time freed up by not having to fold laundry any longer.

The company’s website promises it’ll take “less time than it takes to brew a cup of coffee” to fold garments and that the Foldimate will keep working “as long as you continue clipping,” despite that inability to fold those pesky fitted sheets.

An $85 deposit it all it takes to secure a Folidmate—but be prepared to wait.

“The plan is to gradually begin early shipments in the U.S. at the end of 2019,” the company says. “We plan to open up additional regions worldwide, which will be driven by customers interest – the more Early Pre-Orders we have from a specific region, the more likely we are to prioritize it.”

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