Our Favorite Washing Machine

Laundry in a family of eight is not a chore, it is a lifestyle. There is the everyday pile, the bedding pile, the mystery-stain pile, and the sports gear that our 8-year-old somehow returns muddier than seemed physically possible. On a bad week the baskets stack up like a small mountain range in the hallway, and a standard-size drum meant running load after load after load just to see the floor again.

What finally turned the tide was the Samsung 5.5 cubic foot top load washer. That oversized drum is the whole point—a weekend of laundry for eight gets done in far fewer, bigger loads, so we spend less of our life walking back and forth to start the next one. It handles the heavy stuff like comforters and towels in one go, but it is still gentle enough that we trust it with the everyday clothes and the little ones’ softer things.

We compared it against a couple of front loaders and some smaller top-load options, and a few were cheaper up front. But the smaller drums would have meant more cycles per week, which is the opposite of what a house this size needs, and the door-height on some front loaders was rough on Mom’s back during the endless loading. The Samsung hit the sweet spot: enough capacity to actually shrink the mountain, controls simple enough that even our oldest can run a load, and a build that has held up to being used basically every single day. Fewer loads, less waiting—that was the win we were after.