Shhhh . . . .
Don’t tell anyone.
I’m actually starting to enjoy Laundry Day.
I know, I know! Please don’t evict me from our Slob Club. But it’s true. Not like have-a-party-and-wish-it-was-every-day true, but true.
One of the things I dislike about housework, one of MANY, is that you never feel like you’re done. As soon as you clean a toilet, someone has the audacity to “use it.” As soon as you mop the floor, someone spills their applejuice. And on and on and on.
You know how I’ve always felt about laundry. It piles up. It gets re-dirtified as soon as someone wears it. It gets forgotten in the washer, or the dryer, or the dirty clothes basket, or the clean clothes basket, etc. etc. etc.
Notice how, once again, I am personifying laundry. I blame it and all of its evil intentions for my inability to keep up with it.
But when I have a Laundry Day (yes, that’s a proper noun), I am the one in control. I have focus for one day. And I know that the day will end. And when it does come to an end, if all of the laundry is done, folded, and put away, I have accomplished something. Something HUGE! And then I don’t have to do laundry for an entire week!!!! Guilt-free!!!
Also today I’ve:
Cleaned up the kitchen.
Did a general pickup.
Cleared kids’ drawers of clothes to save for next fall, and clothes to give away, and clothes to put in garage sale.
Laundry, laundry, and more laundry.
Lenetta @ Nettacow says
Sigh. Can you send some of that good laundry karma over here? Before I left for work this morning, I put a load in so it'd be ready to hang out when I got home. The drain tube came out of the pipe it fits in and the carpet is soaked. And a handful of years ago, I had a jug of laundry detergent crack on the bottom and a LOT dripped out before I realized it. We figured we'd just replace the carpet when we moved out… I'm a little bit afraid of how that's going to work out when I start shop-vac-ing the water. But I guess I'd better get to it…
MJ says
So here are my questions: Where is your w/d located? What do you do in between loads? And how do you manage to get the clothes folded and put away?! I can sort the laundry, wash the laundry and even dry the laundry. And then I take it out of dryer (or off the clothes line), stick it in a basket and …. there it sits a week (Yes, a week!) later. How long does your all-day laundry fest take? B/c I am imagining 15-20 hours between dropping off kids, picking up kids, nursing babies, feeding babies, trying to do my freelance job, etc. Don't get me wrong, your once-a-week method sounds appealing, but I'm just not sure how to really make it work? Can you talk us through the logistics a bit more?
Nony (A Slob Comes Clean) says
First of all, Lenetta, I'm feeling your pain. Oh, that is just the worst send-me-right-over-the-edge feeling, I know.
MJ, basically I don't worry about too much else on laundry day. Obviously, I'm also writing, but between loads, there's 30 minutes to an hour. Mostly, it's being conscious of the washer all day, waiting for the dryer buzzer to go off so I can switch another load, since I'm racing the clock to get it done in one day. I lay flat everything that needs to not be horribly wrinkled (something I never used to do), and then I pile all the clean clothes on my "made" bed and if I can find a moment here and there, I fold, putting away as soon as a stack is made. Then in the evening, I finish up the folding. Honestly, the more I've done it, the less laundry I have, and so it's actually manageable now. Before, to do it all in one day was actually doing three weeks or so worth of laundry, so it was a much bigger job then. Sorry to ramble on, but I'll try to write a thorough post about it next Monday.
MJ says
Thank you, that would be awesome! The more I read about your method, the more I want to try it. I feel as though laundry is the bane of my existence. I have even stopped cloth diapering (which I love) because I just couldn't keep up with the extra two loads a week. I've been trying — and failing — at the FlyLady method of one load a day. In theory, it sounds great, but when I miss a day (often!), the whole thing spirals out of control in a nano-second. I'm also thinking of getting rid of half our clothes, because the amount of laundry we create is SICK!
Nony (A Slob Comes Clean) says
If you click on the post label "laundry" at the end of the post, I think you can read the other posts I've written as I've come to this point of "enjoying" it. I also tried for a very long time to do the one a day method, but the spiral thing you mentioned meant that it didn't work for me.
Lenetta @ Nettacow says
Attempting to shop vac it up resulted in bubbles shooting out the top of said vac. I'm quite seriously at the point where I think we need to just rip it out and put peel and stick tile down. Otherwise, I don't know what to do!
And actually, what sent me over the edge was hanging two loads (of Hubs's farm clothes, thankfully) on the line only to have the bolts pull out of the side of the house and the whole thing come crashing down. On concrete, also thankfully. I came in to put the 3 year old to bed, and the cherry on top of the crud sundae was that we were both crying by the time she climbed in bed. (She was at Grandma's for several days and got too tired, and she's always been super slow to catch up.) So. I'm just thankful that tomorrow is a new day!
Anonymous says
How do you decide what to give away and what to put in your garage sale?
I feel like I can't sell any of my kids' clothes because so many people at church or my sil's are waiting to use them. My mom buys my kids tons of cute clothes thrift or resale shop. so they have lots of clothes, but I've got piles of clothes all over my house that need sorted into the size/gender appropriate tubs. We have way too many kids clothes, and I would love to sell some, but I don't want to disappoint my mom or let someone down who might need my clothes later. am I making sense?
Becky
Nony (A Slob Comes Clean) says
Becky, that's a very good question. If things are given to me as hand-me-downs by random people at church, hubby's work, whatever, I attempt to give them to someone else. But I don't give myself an ulcer about it. Once, I had seperated them into seperate bags of "sell in the garage sale" and "give away" and forgot to put the give away bag inside. People tore into it and bought a lot of stuff, so I just handed my friend who gave it to us 10 dollars the next time I saw her and said, "You had a garage sale!" She was happy. My philosophy is that if a relative gave it to me, or if I bought it, I can sell it. But I also don't have people waiting to use it. That would be hard. I'm usually searching to find someone to give the give away bag to, since it seems that my daughter is the youngest girl we know who doesn't have an older sister.
You could ask your mom her opinion about selling them. Also, if you just want them out, you could go ahead and give them to whoever will need them, even if it means that THEY have to store them. I'm okay with storing things for my own kids to use later, but with my clutter issues, I can't store things for other people.
Busy Mommy says
I had quite the laundry day the other day. Typically I do all the laundry and the kids have to put their own things away. I almost started crying (literally) when I found several pairs of folded up, clean dress pants in their dirty laundry baskets. So frustrating. I must say, I did threaten to make them do their own laundry, even though they're 8 & 9. (my hubby says go for it, they're not too young) But I got over it…don't know what I'll do next time though.
Jeanine says
My boys started doing their own at about that age. It was really great when they’d complain about not having any clean socks and I could just say, “oh well, guess you should have done laundry.” Whereas before, I’d feel guilty because I was the one who hadn’t done laundry.
Now that they’re in their 20’s they tell me that was one thing I did right. They know how to do laundry. The downside is that they decided they’d rather use the clothes out of their baskets than put them in the drawers, but I let them decide that (I may have rescued dress pants and shirts, but it was mostly jeans, T-shirts, and sweat pants.) Finally, one of them now cares about how his clothes look and hangs things up from the dryer (he even bought an iron).
Betty says
One thing I just started that has made a real difference in our laundry situation is buying different colored laundry baskets for each family member. As I fold the clothes they go into the appropriate basket and then they are responsible for putting their laundry away AND returning the basket. The baskets are only 1.5 bushel so the nest nicely on top of the dryer when not in use. If I do not have a returned basket, then that person is then responsiblevfor folding and putting away their own clothes. So far so good. It has kept the piles of both folded and unfolded clothes off of my sofa, which in turn keeps the living room looking soo much better.
KellyJMF says
If you have people you would hand clothes down to, ask them to come help prep for the garage sale and take any clothes they want before the selling starts.
Stephanie says
After listening to your laundry podcast, I decided to return to the method my Mom always used when I was growing up. Monday was laundry day and Thursday was too but only to make sure we were ready for the weekend, or to do towels or sheets. It feels so good to get all that laundry done and know that it is clean and out away. Next step is to clean up the drawers, switch seasons and figure out how many clothes we really need.