Learn Italian: La lavatrice lava il bucato. - The washing machine washes the laundry.

They share the same root! Lava is the third-person singular form of the verb lavare (to wash). The suffix -trice is used to describe a person or machine that performs an action, so a lavatrice literally means a female washer. Many machines in Italian are feminine for this reason.

How can I easily remember if lavatrice is masculine or feminine?

Nouns ending in -trice are always feminine in Italian, which is why it takes the article la. This ending is the feminine version of the masculine -tore, similar to how a male actor is an attore and a female actress is an attrice.

Why use il bucato here instead of i vestiti?

I vestiti simply means clothes in general, like what you are wearing right now. Il bucato specifically means laundry, referring to the batch of clothes, sheets, or towels that need to be washed, are being washed, or were just washed.

Why is there an il before bucato? In English we often just say 'washes laundry' without 'the'.