Laundry
Do you ever feel like laundry is taking over your home and your time? Whether you are single, have a large family with young children, or are empty nesters, you can probably relate to the constant laundry battle. If you’ve already mastered your laundry process, congratulations! Pick a different spot to focus on this week. Everyone else, let’s get to work!
First, we need to have a chat about the laundry cycle. Contrary to popular belief, “doing the laundry” does not end with the clean laundry being thrown in the dryer or dry clothes being thrown in a basket. The final and, in my opinion, most important step in the laundry cycle is returning each item to their dedicated spot in your home. That dedicated spot can be a dresser, on a hanger in your closet, or placed in a detailed, color-coded laundry system for each member of your household (my families with young kids!!). Whatever the place, in order for you to stay on top of the laundry, and keep your home from looking like a constant rummage sale, you must follow through with this final step every time you start a load of laundry! If you don’t have the time to see a load of laundry through the entire cycle, don’t start it. If you break this rule, you will not be able to keep up and you’ll end up with a pile, or piles, of wrinkly clothes that will end up back in the dryer!
Now, let’s talk about time. Your time is very precious, and you don’t want to spend every available minute of your day folding or hanging clothes, right? But, have you ever tracked how long it actually takes to put away a load of laundry? Most people greatly overestimate that figure. A load of laundry should take no longer than 15 minutes to put away, as long as you are not backlogged with multiple loads in baskets and you have a place for everything you’ve washed. If your closets are filled to the brim and you can barely squeeze everything in, you will likely spend more time trying to put away additional clean clothes. We’ll talk more about closets next week!
So take a look around your home and if you see clean clothes laying in baskets, or strewn across empty furniture, spend 15 minutes each day this week and work your way through those piles. If you focus on getting caught up, and follow my rule of not starting a new load of laundry if you don’t have time to put it away, you will see a major improvement in your laundry backlog throughout the week!
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