Harriedmumof5: Laundry, Laundry oh Laundry

We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry. EB WHITE

I have been reading a lot online about people trying to tackle the laundry monster. Most of the time, I just laugh at what people come up for a solution. My personal favorite is, buy less clothes, you do less laundry. I am not sure where they learned Math at, maybe they are the product of the new math that was the rage in the 70s. Less clothes means you are actually doing more laundry more often and your loads are not going to be as full as it could be so higher electric and water bills besides the hours of wasted time.

Does your life resemble this:

Do you feel like your life is a never ending pile of dirty laundry. Are you always rushing to get a load in, dried, folded and put away?

I rarely need to tame the laundry monster. Why? Because I only do laundry once a week. I know for some people that sounds like crazy talk but hear me out:

One day a week, on the day I clean house, I do all of our laundry from start to finish including putting it all away. One thing that helps with this super task is we bought the biggest washer and dryer on the market which fits 18 bath towels. I am pretty sure, I could throw in a couple of kids also and get that chore all done at once.

There are several laundry hampers in our house. Dirty clothes go in the hamper. If they are not in the hamper then better luck next week to get clean clothes. Even though I have two teenagers who are perfectly capable of doing their laundry, most weeks we trade chores. I do their laundry, and they do additional chores that I do not necessarily love but they like to do more then their own laundry. I like to sort my laundry into segments because it is easier to put the clothes away. The teenage boys laundry normally goes into one wash, and then from there I sort the rest; tops in one load and bottoms in another load. Light colored clothes get washed in their own load. Socks and underwear get their own load also (I wash these on hot). I also do a couple of loads of bath towels and of course sheets from everyone's beds (there is nothing like clean sheets on your bed). Once a month, I wash everyone's blankets from the beds. When I had little ones in diapers, I washed a load of diapers every other day. Of course if there is some sort of gross accident, that laundry gets washed during the week, but that rarely happens now that I have to do any laundry mid-week.

From start to finish, it takes me any where from 5 to 8 hours to do laundry. No, I am not chained to the laundry room that entire time. I am off doing other things while clothes dry. One thing I learned long ago is dressers are just huge clutter of frustrations. A couple of decades ago, I got rid of all dressers in our house. I could not be happier. Laundry is so much easier not having to fold laundry. As soon as a load of laundry is done, I immediately take the clothes from the dryer and hang it on hangers. Socks and underwear go in baskets that are located in each person's closet. I never ever have mounds of laundry all over my house waiting to be folded or put away.

I never pre-treat stains. 90% of all stains, will come out on their own in the wash. As I am pulling the laundry out of the wash machine, I am checking for stains. If I find one I use fals naptha which gets almost everything out even when I accidentally dry a stained item.