Handling the Hamper
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Homemaking on Wednesday, October 06, 2010 11:04 PM
When my husband and I got married, we’d spent the previous years in college dorms.
As dorm-dwellers, both Bryan and I had ascribed to the method of laundry-stretching whereby you stock up on socks and underwear and wear the same pair of jeans for a week at a time. This was great when we combined households, since we had so many essentials that we could go almost a month without washing clothes.
My first laundry strategy was pretty extreme. I’d wait until we were down to dregs, check the nearby laundromat to make sure it was empty, then haul all of our clothes over there and run five loads at a time. Wash them all, dry them all, drag them home, and spend the rest of the day folding and putting away. It was exhausting, but when it was done I didn’t have to worry about it again for weeks.
Then we moved and got our own washer and dryer and I started a different laundry strategy, the one I kept up for years. Although I don’t know if it should be called a strategy, since it was more reactive than active - I’d wait until we ran out of something, then wash a single load to meet the need.
Years of this. Really. It was not very productive, and it was stressful too, since I often had to juggle other time commitments when dealing with laundry emergencies. Besides which, my husband would often try to help by running a load of laundry for me (but rarely folding it or putting it away) and that created conflict in our marriage. It was not a good approach for our family.
A couple years ago, as part of my quest to becoming a better housekeeper, I committed to getting the laundry under control. I wanted to be more like my mother, who has a designated laundry day each week and by the end of that day has only clean clothes in the house. (Not counting the ones people are wearing, of course. Birthday-suit laundry day would be… weird.) I love the idea of getting down to a clean laundry slate on the same day every week.
Unfortunately, I’m not my mom, and I don’t do well with regimented approaches to chores. It’s taken me some time to learn it, and some time to work out my current laundry approach, in which I do completely empty my laundry room, but not weekly. It happens about every other week, after I get a burst of laundry energy and do three loads in a day. Otherwise I like to work on it gradually. I have, however, gotten to a point where I stay on top of my family’s clothing needs. I’m happy about that.
Do you have a “laundry day” or do you tackle the task daily? Has your approach changed with time or life circumstances? Do you want to scare me with tales of how much laundry you must do when you have a big family instead of a little one like ours? (Really… I am kind of scared about that.)
Let’s talk laundry, ladies!
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