Friday, July 16, 2010

A post about laundry! Could it GET any duller?

If there were any lingering doubt that my life (and this blog) was fairly boring and mundane, this pretty much cinches it:

I'm writing a blog post about laundry. Yup. It's come to that.

However, as boring and pathetic as that sounds, my recent "laundry plan of attack" really has made life smoother and easier, so it seemed worth sharing.

Until recently, I would continually do laundry, and it was a continual pain. Plus, it had a habit of remaining "half-done": for example, some of the clean clothes would remain in the laundry room because "I'll just bring it up tomorrow with the next load." So it seemed like I was always sorting, always washing, and always having both clean and dirty laundry in various parts of the house.

Well, here's what I do now:
1) On Thursday morning, as soon as my feet hit the floor, I strip the sheets off the bed. I put them in the wash either right before or after my shower, before I get dressed. (I don't want to risk getting a drop of bleach on my clothes, ever, as I had a childhood trauma regarding bleach, which you can read about here.)

2) Later that day on Thursday, I wash all the towels and put them back on the rack, and of course I also put the clean sheets back on.

3) On Thursday evening, usually when the kids are taking their baths, I haul the laundry basket of clothes downstairs. I sort everything (which I find oddly enjoyable) and start a load of jeans. (Jeans are quick and easy to do in the evening, because there's not much to it, and there's all the same.)

4) When the jeans are done (usually right before I go to bed), I fold them and dump in the load of darks and put it on "delay" so it will start washing at about 6 am.

5) On Friday morning, before I get dressed (the bleach thing again), I move the darks to the dryer and dump in the whites.

6) When these are done, the girls put away all the kids' clothes. They also sort and put away all underwear and socks. I put away remaining things. This is usually done by around lunchtime.

7) This leaves the delicates, which is usually a fairly small load, and mostly my stuff. I might squeeze that in on Friday as well, but otherwise I throw them in some other morning, and it's no big deal.

So, wow. That sounds like a lot. BUT it is a lot easier, to me, to do it all at once and not have to worry about it the other days.

One thing I like is that now, when I see the laundry piling up, it doesn't stress me out or piss me off. I just think, "Yup, that'll all get taken care of on Friday," and I go on with my life.

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