If you’ve read any of my other posts over the last few weeks, you’ve probably gathered that I don’t like to spend time on mundane chores. If you didn’t pick up on that, I’ve been way too subtle! Official declaration: I don’t like to spend time on mundane chores! Some are a necessary evil, however, and I’m always looking for new ideas to make them less mundane (hmm, tall order), or at least take less time.
Laundry is one of those chores that seem like the task of Sisyphus. Remember your Greek mythology? Sisyphus was the dude who had to push a boulder up a hill every day, just to have it roll down so he had to do it again. That’s laundry – pushing the bolder up the hill every day – the never-ending task.
It took me a long time to finally find a system that worked for me and laundry. Let me say that, from the start of our marriage, my husband has done his own laundry. This is good and bad. I do appreciate that I don’t have to wash and fold his clothes, but it’s led to us fighting over the washer and dryer.
In the beginning, I did laundry whenever, lived out of laundry baskets half the time, and for the most part, this worked. Once kids came along, however, the laundry tripled, and suddenly I was doing laundry every day, trying to catch up on the weekends, and the laundry baskets never got emptied. One of us ran out of clean clothes at least once a month (and that’s a total fail because we have WAY too many clothes to run out). Plus, wet laundry would get left in the washer, causing it to smell and have to be rewashed. I felt like all I did was laundry, yet it was never done.
What finally worked for me was to schedule laundry into my week. I started with Monday nights. I put it on my calendar so that I would avoid scheduling anything else on that night. I would try to put the first load in before dinner, it was usually ready to go in the dryer after dinner, and then I would fold a basket of whatever is still in a basket (there’s always laundry in a basket), and usually have time to put it away before the clothes in the dryer were done and ready for folding. (Thank goodness for “Dancing with the Stars” on Monday nights – a good TV program makes folding go faster.)
When I’m feeling depressed about laundry, I try to remember what it used to be like to wash clothes!
I divvy laundry up by the person and/or household laundry. I would do at least 3 loads of laundry (wash and dry two, and 3rd left to dry – if I have time, I finish that load up on Tuesday night). We all usually have enough clothes to go for two weeks, so I would be able to wash in combos of two, i.e., son/daughter; me/daughter; daughter/sheets; me/towels.
Of course, some assumptions are made here – each person has his/her own hamper. When the child was smaller, I usually washed all his/her clothes together – whites and colors or lights and darks. I never had anything run (I did, however, have a crayon melt! Oh, that’s heinous.) I just don’t see the point of separating the kids’ clothes into two or more loads when I could be done with one large load. As they got bigger, their clothes got bigger, and one load was not going to be enough, so at that point, I would separate lights and darks. I find it much easier to wash clothes by the person – this when I’m folding, I don’t have a million piles of each kids’ clothes. I have maybe four piles (shirt, pants, pajamas, and underwear) with a hill of sox. I also don’t have to go room to room for distribution. I put them in the basket, and bring them up to their room – when they are old enough, they can put them away themselves, and when they are younger, I only have to deliver to one room. It’s much easier than doing mixed person washing.
I’ll be honest, once we had three children, I ended up claiming Sunday as well as Monday as “my” laundry days. I’ll put in a load on Sunday, and that way I can put it in the dryer and start another before work (or after) I found I needed to do more loads of laundry, and just Monday was not enough.
By scheduling in my laundry day(s), I was able to:
- Schedule a different day for my husband so that we were not in conflict over the washer and dryer.
- Schedule time that I dedicated to doing laundry – which allowed me to not feel like I was doing laundry *all* the time, or try to fit it in. It also allowed me to complete a load from wash to drawer (not all of it, but more than before!).
- Once the children became old enough to do his/her own laundry (age 12 in my house), I assigned them a day, and they became part of the rotation.
It’s not perfect. Sometimes I have to do an emergency wash in the middle of the week because I’ve miscalculated the amount of clean clothes a child has left OR someone wants to wear something that’s dirty OR we’ve had some sort of laundry emergency (this usually involves vomit, blood, or urine!) I also can’t always avoid Monday night obligations – I’d feel funny telling my daughter’s teacher that I can’t attend open house because “it’s laundry night”. I can usually plan around those disruptions. I’d say 46 weeks out of the year this works for me.
I could have made it more organized, too – maybe keeping a chart of which child/household laundry’s “turn” it was for the week – similar to my meal planning, I could ensure that no child would run out of clean underwear. But, I didn’t do that, and it’s worked out ok.
So, what works for you? I’d love to hear how you manage the task of Sisyphus. I’ve heard the suggestions to do whatever is in the laundry basket every day, or wash one type of laundry every day, or wash one person’s clothes daily (sort of like what I do, except each person is responsible for his/her own). Do you do one of these? Or something different?
