I know what you’re thinking.
There’s a fun part of laundry?
Comparatively, yes.
I actually love Mondays. Mondays are my Laundry Days. There is a 60% chance that a Monday will be a normal Monday, which is pretty good around here.
And Mondays come after Sundays, which are the nights when I pick up and make things decent-looking for our church home group to meet.
So, on most Monday mornings, the house looks pretty nice (as long as I don’t look in the bedrooms) and I get a lot of blogging work done in each hour it takes for each load to wash/dry.
But the un-fun part is the time between those hours. The moment when the dryer stops and I need to get up and go fold and put away the clothes.
I hate intensely dislike that moment. It generally happens at the exact time when I’m waxing particularly poetic and profound.
When I just don’t feel like stopping to get up.
But when I do, when I waste my time stooping down and pulling out and folding or hanging . . . when I make that last trip to deliver a particularly sneaky pair of shorts to a room where I’ve already been twice . . . something good happens.
I get to move on. Move on to the part I don’t mind.
I don’t mind switching wet clothes from the washing machine to the dryer. I don’t mind scooping up an already-sorted-by-my-kids-the-night-before pile of dirty laundry and putting it in the washer. Those things are easy, if not exactly fun.
And they’re made mentally easier, mentally much-closer-to-fun when I don’t have what used to be the final step of Laundry Day hanging over my head: an ever-growing pile o’ clean clothes on the loveseat.
It helps when I identify my least favorite part of the day.
When I push through it.
When I realize it takes much less time to complete this despised step than my over-imaginative mind assumes.
When I see the huge difference it makes in Laundry Day (and therefore in our home).
Identifying what we don’t like is a big key in being able to work past it…but I think the other thing you’re doing is even better. Getting the folding/hanging/putting away out of the way so you can get
to the part you do like. It’s kind of like a reward when you look at it like that. 🙂
I seriously need to work on having a ‘laundry day.’ That’s one of the only things I like about going to the laundromat…having it all done at once, instead of dragging it out forever. Because you’re right. When you don’t do it in one day, the job is never completed. It’s like the Energizer Bunny…the laundry keeps going and going and going. Not that there will ever be an end to it…but there can be an end to it a week at a time.
Now I just have to get my daughter to give away 9/10 of the clothing store that is her room. 🙂
Yes, having an “end” to laundry, even though temporary, is why I love it. Goes with my project mentality.
You inspired a post for me today. I linked to you in my post.
I totally get this. I’m always amazed at how excited I get when I open the dryer door and find it is empty and ready to accept the clean load that is ready to go in. It is like a gift every time.
You’re the best Nony!
One thing that helps me is to NOT fold all of the laundry. Organizing expert Denise Schofield (hope I spelled that right) wrote in one of her books that she does not fold some items. I think it included underwear and washcloths. I was thrilled that someone who is probably Normal said it was OK to throw things in a pile and leave them that way!
I don’t fold underwear. I toss mine straight from the dryer into a plastic basket which I put in my drawer. Hubby is given a basket with his (he chooses to then fold his and stack them in his drawer). The kids are each given back their hamper with clean unfolded undies, unpaired socks and folded shorts and pants and can do what they wish with it. I hang all of our tops and “good” pants straight out of the dryer so they don’t wrinkle. (I rarely have to iron anything.) I toss towels and washcloths into a smallish canvas cube hamper and we all fold them later when we watch TV. (I like them folded because I think they’re harder to use if wrinkled.) Hope these ideas help someone.)
Love this! When someone asks my friend Connie of Smockity Frocks how she manages with 8 kids, she says, “Oh, I just don’t fold underwear.”
Love these ideas, thanks!
I SO get this… and I’ve had to make myself a couple of rules–that I don’t start washing the next load until the one I just took out is folded & put away…and I HAVE to get up & go get the clothes out of the drier when the timer goes off. To help make me do it, I keep an audiobook handy on my phone that I only get to listen to when doing stuff I don’t like (like folding & putting away laundry!) or other comparably boring things like chopping veggies or stirring something on the stove.
I hear ya sista!!! What is it about the folding and putting away? I have a basket of folded right now that needs to go upstairs to the kids rooms. Some of the clothes have been in there since the last laundry day – last week. And that “finished” feeling is so fleeting, someone always has to put on clean undies and wreck it :O)
I totally relate, not so sure I will get myself to folding out of the dryer but totally get it! However I’m a little disappointed, I was all excited thinking you had some great new easy way of folding and putting away clothes or something…oh well guess I will just keep lying the clothes out in the basket as soon as they are done (I try anyway) so they don’t wrinkle too much. lol
As I am reading these comments, my dryer is going into it tenth (at least) time of “beep beep beep”and spinning the clothes so they don’t wrinkle. Nice feature by the way but I listen to far too many beeps. Yeah, what IS IT about putting away clothes?
Oh…my menace. The Dryer! I can.not.stand folding and putting away laundry! I am like the others too. I don’t fold undies. I say at least twice a week how unsatisfying laundry is in general. 🙂