Active Hamper Review: My Running Clothes Stopped Stinking Up the House

If you’ve ever finished a run and immediately hung your sweaty clothes over the shower door because you didn’t want them making the entire laundry hamper smell, you’re exactly who the Active Hamper was designed for.

Instead of trapping sweaty gear in one pile, it separates each day’s workout into breathable compartments while using airflow and moisture-absorbing buckets to help reduce odor between washes. We tested it through weeks of hot, humid Southern summer running to see if it actually worked.

As a runner training for a fall marathon through the summer in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, if there are two things I do a lot of it’s 1. sweat and 2. generate a ton of sweaty, smelly laundry. 

So, needless to say, when I was given an opportunity to review a hamper specifically designed for sweaty, smelly activewear I jumped on it.

But could a hamper – even a fancy one – really stand up to Southern sweat? Let’s find out.

Active Hamper Overview

My usual M.O. for dealing with my sweaty clothing post-workout is to drape it on laundry baskets in my laundry room. While this helped it dry, it did nothing for the smell.

After just a few days of this, the laundry room itself became quite….malodorous. In an ideal world, I’d wash my workout gear more than once a week. In the real world, who has time for that?

So what is the Active Hamper? An entire page on its website is devoted to explaining how it works, as in tell me all the nitty gritty details of why this is better.

The idea is simple: after each workout, you place one item of clothing into each compartment. Depending on the level of sweat saturation and room temperature and humidity, each article of clothing should dry about 80% within the first 24 hours.

With the moisture and odor all staying contained in the hamper.

The Active Hamper consists of three main parts:

• a hard plastic ventilated shell
• a nylon/spandex breathable insert with four-compartment sorter
• three buckets containing dehumidifying, deodorizing granules.

There’s also a cover made of the same breathable nylon/spandex material, which further helps contain odor and keep enterprising pets out while still allowing air to circulate.

The insert is machine washable and the outer plastic shell can be easily wiped clean as needed.

The only ongoing cost after purchasing the system is the refill buckets of the dehumidifying/deodorizing granules.

Active Hamper recommends replacing the buckets about every 60 days, or when drying time lengthens or odor becomes stronger. The buckets themselves are recyclable in some states, so you’ll have to check where you live.

How We Tested

When the Active Hamper arrived on my front porch, I found it very easy to set up and immediately put it to work. It was the perfect slim size to fit even in my not-spacious laundry room.

The first week, I used it as recommended with the cover on it. The cover has self-closing openings for each compartment of the sorter, making it easy to drop clothing in even with the cover on.

Meaning I went out on my daily runs in the 85F, very high humidity mornings to bring home gear that was soaked through. For many of you that won’t be the norm, but it was during my testing.

The majority of fabrics I tested on were Lycra and other breathable technical fabrics, nothing cotton. The goal for me was a solution that eliminated clothes all over the place, cut down on odors and kept things more organized in between wash cycles.

Also knowing that not allowing that funk to sit in the fabric is going to extend the smell free life of my gear!

The cover absolutely helped contain the odor – I didn’t smell a thing even when the hamper got fairly full toward the end of the week.

What it did NOT necessarily do a great job of is drying the clothing – even when just one article of clothing was in each compartment. Most pieces were noticeably drier than when we dropped them in, but my sweatiest summer gear wasn’t completely dry after 24 hours. Which as they will tell you is likely because I was drenched, not mildly sweaty, but middle of summer seriously wet from a long time outside.

The biggest win wasn’t perfectly dry clothing. It was opening the hamper several days later and not getting hit with that unmistakable sweaty workout smell.

The second week I thought I’d try it without the cover, to see if increased airflow might be helpful given just how saturated in sweat my gear usually is after a run or workout in the heat and humidity.

The outcome? Slightly more effective at drying, though most of the clothing was still far from 80% dry after even 48 hours. Thankfully, though, the odor was still well managed even without the cover trapping it in.

Is it Worth the Price?

I kept asking myself whether a laundry hamper could really be worth this much. By the end of testing, I realized I wasn’t comparing it to a $20 plastic hamper. I was comparing it to constantly hanging sweaty clothes around the house, dealing with lingering odors, and dreading opening the laundry room door. That’s where the value became much clearer.

The Active Hamper isn’t an impulse purchase. But if you’ve spent years hanging sweaty clothes over shower rods, stair railings, or chairs just to keep your laundry room from smelling, it starts to make a lot more sense. You’re paying for a solution to a very specific problem, and after weeks of testing, we found it did exactly what we hoped: it noticeably reduced odors while making laundry day a little less gross.

I’ll happily continue to use it, as the primary issue my family had with my smelly, sweaty workout wear was the odor – and the Active Hamper has done a great job so far with deodorizing.

The clothing even smells better after washing than it has in the past. I do appreciate that this also easily helps keep all my smelly workout gear completely separate from other laundry.

What to read next?

• hDrop Review: An RD Explains Who Will Benefit from Sweat Testing
• Must Have Summer Running Gear
• Ways to Avoid Running Burnout – Marathon and Beyond