I hated laundry. It was literally the bane of my existence. I casually mentioned to Matt that I was thinking about sending out all our laundry. I had seen a handful of ads on Facebook that would pick up your laundry, wash, dry and return it neatly folded in 24 hours. He looked at me like I was insane. What he actually said was, “don’t you think you hire out enough?” Ouch. But, he has a point. I am a stay at home mom that has a part time nanny and a housekeeper that comes every other week. It’s not as if I don’t have time to do the laundry. If you work outside of the home and your spouse/partner works full time too, HIRE OUT THE LAUNDRY. If that is something you can afford, stop reading right now and find someone to do it for you. Peace be with you.
But, as a stay at home mom, I felt like this is really part of my job, and I needed to figure out how to get it done without losing my mind, being grumpy all week or feeling like a failure because that “one thing” that someone in this house needs is inevitably dirty. So, I began asking around. Asking my mom friends and sister-in-law (I think I asked her no less than 6 times in a few months), how do you do it? Most answers were, “a load a day.” “It’s the only way to stay on top of it with 3 kids.” “You have to do a load a day.” So, that’s what I started doing. One load a day. I felt like everyone should have what they needed with me washing a load a day. But here was my issue, because I am a professional procrastinator, I usually just threw a load of towels in the wash on Monday, dried them on Tuesday, put another load of random things on Tuesday and so on. I never washed the actual clothes because I didn’t want to fold them. So, Matt would be out of undershirts and the girls would be out of underwear, and I would rush through about 4 loads in a day the entire time feeling like a failure again that week. I did “laundry” every day, why weren’t the needed clothes ever clean? And don’t even get me started on having to wash the towels for the aging dog that likes to pee in her kennel now, so those are washed almost daily as well.
This went on for about 6 months until I finally decided to go rogue. I thought to myself, I freaking hate the laundry, why am I putting myself through this all week. I am going to start doing the laundry, for the whole house on one day. So, that’s what I’ve done. And y’all, it’s been life changing. I have been doing laundry on Mondays now for almost a year and it has been one of the biggest shifts in my routine and mood. I know that’s a big statement and weight to put on the act of washing clothes, but I’m serious. It has freed me of so much grumpiness and disdain for this chore and allowed me to get it done and feel good about myself and the way I care for my family. And the magic of this is, when something gets really dirty during the week or I need to wash the towels from the dog kennel, the washing machine is free. It doesn’t interrupt a load that I am working on and it doesn’t have to sit and spoil waiting on the washing machine to be free.
Below is step by step how I hacked my way to actually enjoying getting the laundry done.
Finding the Perfect Day
Mine is Mondays. Mondays work for me, for several reasons. First, it’s a fresh start and I always have a ton of energy on Mondays to get stuff done. Secondly, after dropping the girls at school, I hit the grocery store and then am home the rest of the day. The added bonus lately, is that being home all day, gives me time to cook and plan out food for the remainder of the week. Third, we have no activities Monday evening. Once I pick up the girls from school, we are home for the night. And lastly, we are almost always home on a Monday. I had started with Fridays, but if we go out of town for the weekend, we usually end up leaving Thursday night.
Nothing Else is Important
I just finished reading, The Lazy Genius Way, by Kendra Adachi. I highly recommend it; it is a great read if you are mom. I was already doing this by my choice of day, but I didn’t realize it until I read her book. On laundry day, nothing else is important. I don’t give myself any other projects or goals for that day, outside of the normal, keep the kids alive and fed. So, generally speaking, nothing should derail me from getting the laundry done.
The Order is Crucial
I am meticulous about the order in which I wash the clothes, which helps me wash things efficiently. I start the towels in the wash on Sunday night as I a picking up the house. Before the girls go to bed on Sunday night (every night really), I always do a quick sweep of the house. Putting away all of the clutter and random things that are out of place. Part of that routine on Sundays, is to gather all the towels and start them in the wash, on hot. I typically move them to the dryer before I go to bed, but it’s not imperative. Once the towels are dry, I just dump them all on my bed and wait to fold them with the rest of the clothes. Next up are gym clothes. I have recently started washing our gym clothes by themselves with extra detergent and a scoop of Oxiclean, to help control the stink. This is only gym clothes that are a fancy stretch or quick dry material, nothing cotton or normal t-shirts. These all get hung to dry, which is why it is the first load of the day. Next are sheets, washed on hot, this is the only load that I will fold directly out of the dryer to reduce wrinkles. Then, I wash Matt and my regular clothes, separated by darks and lights. These get washed on a quick cycle on cold, I use the quick cycle to save time and for these clothes, it gets the job done. As these loads are done drying, I pull them out of the dryer and lay out anything that could get wrinkled (dress shirts, pants, etc) and then everything else gets dumped on the pile on the bed. The last TWO loads of the day are the girls’ clothes. I do not separate these, everything gets washed together. I do two loads, because all together is too big of a load at once. These get washed on cold, regular cycle, because kids are gross and stinky.
I Still Have a Little Help
Even though I do the majority of the work with the laundry, I do still have a little help. We have a babysitter that comes for a few hours a week to sit with the baby so I can get out without her. Lana is a Godsend and has been helping me with the girls since Stella was born. She is normally here on Tuesday mornings, and she will fold and put away all the girls’ clothes for me. Because of Covid, we haven’t been on a regular schedule with Lana the past year, so on the weeks she isn’t able to be here, I finish up the girls’ clothes first thing Tuesday morning or late Monday night depending on how my day goes.
Folding All at Once
As you can see above, all I have been doing all day is taking the clothes out of the dryer and dumping them on the bed. I really hate the act of folding and putting the clothes away, so I save it all to do at one time. It goes by quicker and once you’re in folding mode, you are kind of on autopilot and it is super easy to get done. I put all the clothes on my bed, so that I HAVE to put them away before bed and so that I can watch TV while doing it. It is just towels and our clothes, most of which belong in our room, so I am already in the right spot. Once the girls are in bed, I fix my nighttime tea, turn on whatever I am currently loving on Netflix and get to work. I fold all the towels first, then start the clothes. Everything gets folded and categorized. And all the hanging clothes are laid out in piles: my tops, my pants, Matt’s tops and Matt’s pants. All the socks get thrown in one big pile and that’s the last thing I do. I saw someone online a few years ago show how they lay out all their shirts that need to be hung and just slip the hanger in, fold the top of the shirt down, slip the next hanger in, fold down, repeat, till you are at the bottom of the pile. It makes hanging the shirts much quicker and then you can just grab all the hangers at once to take to the closet. Try it, I didn’t think it would make a huge difference, but it really does. The entire folding process now takes me approximately 45 minutes rather than the 4-5 business day speed I was running at before. Big improvement.
I hope that by sharing my routine, it will help you in yours. Not everything will work for everyone, but hopefully it will inspire you to try something different to make your laundry routine a little less terrible.
