At the risk of getting all “Hints from Heloise,” I’ve got a housekeeping question.
Yesterday was Laundry Day at our house. Laundry Day always kind of kicks my butt because I do all of the clothes, towels, sheets, and rugs in one day. Every Laundry Day when I’m sorting mountains of laundry and trudging up and down the stairs to the washing machine and drying racks I wonder if it would be easier to do a load a day rather than three to five loads on Thursdays. (I also reflect on how much easier laundry day is since we moved out of the apartment with the coin-op laundry machines. As fun as my daughter found it to ride atop a mountain of warm, dry clothes on our way back home from the laundry room, having the washing machine in my house is a real luxury.)
So, how do y’all do your laundry? I’ve got a poll for you to answer below, and if you care to leave more details about how your laundry method works (or doesn’t work) for you, please utilize the comments section.
Imperfect Happiness 
Oh, dear! I came here in book blog mode and I’ve gotten distracted by laundry questions! Laundry has a way of haunting me I guess. I’ve always been for doing it all in one day, usually once a week. These days my four kids do their own laundry, so they each have designated days that they never really stick to and often all end up doing it all on one day and getting into fights about it 🙂
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Sorry to distract you, Shelley! I don’t read fast enough these days to have a just-books blog, so I write about all kinds of stuff. And all of the feedback I’ve gotten about laundry has helped me even more than I expected it to. There’s something for me about hearing that there are all different ways people do a necessary task. Thanks for stopping by…and for commenting!
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I put on a wash every morning, and my boys take it from there. They hang it up to dry, and put away everything. It’s been a lot of training, but now I am reaping the benefits 🙂
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That sounds like very worthwhile training. I might have to institute a similar routine at our house! Did you have to use bribery, or did they gradually just come around and see this as their job?
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I do let them earn time on video games, 4 hours a week, for their chores, including the laundry. So, you could call that bribery? But, like now we are taking a video game break for a few months, but they will still do their chores. I still have to remind them every day, or they would do very little, but I all for a nudge in the right direction. 🙂
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We definitely do a little every day or else we’d be swamped in the stuff within a couple days. We cloth diaper too, so our machine runs at least 3 wash cycles a day before counting things like blankets or bleach/white loads which are done separately too.
If our washing machine broke down, I’m pretty sure it would be a crisis within 48 hours. LOL
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Ah, yes! We definitely did laundry at least twice a week during the heavy cloth-diapering phases. I also sense that I’m going to have to do laundry more often in the summertime with all of the fun, messy, outdoor things the kids are already getting into.
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My laundry method is to toss in a couple of loads every time the hampers are full … or each time I change the sheets and towels … or run out of cloth napkins. It amounts to 2-3 loads twice a week, and I’ll just fold at my leisure (I actually really like folding laundry, sort of Zen for me) and everyone in my house puts their own clothes away.
I will admit I’m a lazy sorter and most everything just gets tossed into the dryer, so the drying rack isn’t out very often (though I love the small of laundry that’s been dried out on my deck in the sun and I used to do it all the time when I was washing cloth diapers). I will also admit to my husband and son having their fair share of pink socks and t-shirts as a result! 🙂
I don’t find laundry kicks my butt, though, if that helps. Kitchen clean-up kicks my butt, because it is constant and never-ending. Any tricks for that (besides not cooking or eating ;-))?
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Sorry, no tips about daily kitchen maintenance. My spouse loves to do dishes, so that’s my secret. I have to do all of the detail stuff because he doesn’t seem to notice when the floor is sticky/crunchy or when there’s been a Lego guy on the counter for several weeks (he just wipes around the toys and cookbooks and Girl Scout badges and chemistry experiments). FlyLady has been kind of helpful for the detail stuff, although I have a love-hate relationship with FlyLady (or rather, with the program itself. I don’t know Marla Cilley well enough to either love or hate her. She seems like a stand-up lady, and I have nothing against her).
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