Wednesday, March 26

Works-for-me Wednesday

Good morning, Blogland!! Here's another tip from my scattered little brain, but hey! It works for me! Thanks to Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer for putting this whole thing together ...

As some of you may know, I hate, loathe, despise, and abominate am not too crazy about laundry. I've written about this before. But I've started doing something in the last few months that's really made a difference in my attitude about laundry. Specifically, getting the clothes actually folded. (I'm great at washing and drying clothes. Just don't ask me to do anything beyond that!)

So here's what I now do:

First off, I check John's schedule, and see what days he's closing for the week. For those who don't know, John is a manager at Chili's, and has a pretty crazy schedule. I try to pick out two days when he's either closing, or has something that night, like a church meeting.

Then I wash clothes. Lots and lots of clothes. And I don't really even separate colors, which drives my mother utterly insane. For real. She gets raaawther upset with me when I do laundry at her house, because I forget to separate the colors, and it's this thing ... I digress. Anyway. I wash lots of clothes. And if I'm able to, I dry them on my clothesline, which I love, and then stick 'em in the dryer for 5 minutes to de-crunch.

And then (and here's the key to the whole thing), I bring my dried clothes to one of two huge laundry bins in my bedroom. And I put them there. And I leave them there, until the appointed evening when John is hopefully working, as mentioned above. And I keep bringing the clothes in. And the two baskets get full, and usually look (combined) like a small mountain of clothes. Then, when Laundry Night comes, I put on my headphones, start up a lecture, and start folding. (You could also put in a movie, or watch the news, if you wanted to. I get too distracted if I try to watch something, which is why I go with the mp3 player.) I wait till the kids are in bed, so I'm totally uninterrupted, and I have as much time as I need. I usually fold about 8-10 loads of laundry, including towels, John's work stuff, sheets, etc.

I get it done so fast!! It always surprises me. And doing laundry like this takes a huge burden off my shoulders. When I walk into my room and see a (well-contained) pile of laundry, I don't freak out because it's just another thing I feel like I'm not going to get done. I know it has a set time to be finished, and I can really forget about it until then.

And when I'm finished folding, I put away everything I can, and the kids stuff stays in piles on the coffee table until the next morning. The smaller Stewarts are really good about putting laundry away, because they know I won't feed them we can't properly start our morning until the clothes are done.

They are usually the ones (David included!) who empty the dryer and take the clothes back to my baskets, and occasionally, I'll dig through the baskets and pull out a large armful of towels, rags, and diapers, and they fold all of them and put them away.

It's a wonderful little method that works for me. Maybe it'll help you, and relieve some stress and worry. If you struggle with laundry, and getting it done, I completely understand and sympathize ...

So, would this work for you? What does work for you when it comes to laundry?

6 comments:

bunchofbull-ers! said...

I am in the habit of doing a load of laundry EVERY morning! And sometimes I do one load in the evenings too! If I see a huge laundry pile, clean or dirty, it sends me into a frenzy!!! I know, probably the OCD in me! Even if I did pile the clean laundry in my room until a certain time, my kids would rummage through it, scattering it all over the place, to find a certain something.
We are a family of 5 too, and there are times when looking into my laundry room, I am convinced the neighbors snuck their laundry in there overnight....WHERE DOES IT ALL COME FROM?!!
Im glad that you have found something that does work for you. Now that I have established my laundry routine, I am happier about laundry too! ;0)

Blessings.
Kelly B.

Jamie said...

I never worry about burglars because if they made it to my room they would trip over my mound of clean clothes at the foot of my bed, trip, and knock themselves out on my bed.
I let the clothes mound up, too, and then I shut the door at night and watch TV while I fold. It's my me time and I differ in that I do it on a night that dad is home so he can put the kids to bed.
I don't sort by colours, either, which kills my mom, too, but I've only had one bleeding episode and it seems that everytime she's done our laundry, something bleeds. I stand by our records.

Totallyscrappy said...

I HATE to fold laundry, but I think I would be overwhelmed by a huge basket that needed folding. Of course, getting done while I watched a movie sounds good.

Teresa said...

I like the idea of throwing your line dried clothes in the dryer for 5 minutes. I always wondered what the solution was for crunchy line dried clothes!

jesnicole said...

I'M SO GLAD TO KNOW I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE WHO LETS THEM PILE BEFORE PUTTING THEM AWAY!!! HOPE YOU'RE DOING WELL!!

Amy E said...

I prefer to do all my laundry on Mondays, it's starts the week with everyone having clean underwear, socks, etc. Everyone knows that on Saturday they clean their rooms, and put their hampers in the laundry room. I fold each load after taking it out of the dryer. At the end of the day, everyone comes and grabs their pile of clothes and puts them away. If I fall of this schedule, I find that I won't wash clothes for weeks, and then I can't get out the backdoor! LOL!