I'm never behind on my laundry. Why? So simple--I do a
load of laundry each day.I know that if I skip even one day, that the laundry starts to pile up and gets way out of control.
It doesn't take a ton of "hands-on" time to do laundry. It only takes about 5 minutes to check and treat garments for stains, and to toss in and start a load. I get tons done during the wash cycle. I then toss the clothes in the dryer (and hang the delicates on a dryer rack). Again, tons more done while the dryer is in progress. Once the dryer cycle is done, the clothes are removed immediately.
The most time-consuming part, is folding the clothes after the dryer cycle is done. But even that takes 10 minutes or less.
So, all in all it takes about 15 minutes of hands-on time to do a load of wash. This is something most anyone can do.
Even if you have a larger family and must do two loads of laundry each day, that's still only 30 minutes per day of hands-on time.
If you have a washer and dryer at home, and you're always behind on laundry, follow the one-load-a-day system (or two-load-a-day system if necessary). Don't skip any days. You'll be able to keep up with your laundry, and never fall way behind.
By the way, when we go on vacation, we wash our clothes every few nights at our hotel. This is a huge time and stress saver when we return.
While this is great advice, when you have more than one young child, it takes more than "just a few minutes", as each step is increased dramatically by each additional person.
In our family with 4 young children, the laundry is going constantly--in addition to doing a load (sort-n-spot, wash, dry, fold-n-away) during the day, I also make sure to put a load in at bedtime that can be shifted over in the morning to make room for the "day" load to start the process.
However, each step takes even longer because of the amount of clothing (6 people!) involved.
Another part of the process that take more than "just a few minutes" is the sorting, when there is more than one child's clothing involved. We've installed the 3 section sorters (white/light, bright, dark/red) with a squirt bottle of spotter on top in the childrens bathroom so when we take off their dirty clothes, we can quick spot-n-sort there and not let the GIANT pile accumulate that takes forever to sort. This also makes it obvious which load needs to be done next-- if the bin is full, it's time!
Add in the much-too-frequent "have to change the baby's bedding" because the diaper overflowed or leaked or was "helped" off, and the surprisingly often "totally soaked with vomit carseat cover and straps", and despite doing MORE than one load/day, it becomes impossible to claim "I'm never behind in my laundry!"
Posted by: DuQuoi | July 18, 2009 at 01:01 AM