I’m a pretty happy person. I’m immensely grateful for my blessings and I really do look for the good in things. But if you asked my kids what I complain about most, they would probably tell you it was the amount of laundry I do in a week. Or maybe the dog hair. It might be a toss-up. We’re talking laundry today. Specifically, how to choose a method for dealing with all. the. loads. If you have kids, you have LAUNDRY. That was laundry in all caps. Laundry that never quits. Laundry that wants to take over the world. So let’s look at three possible systems to handle laundry.
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Three systems to handle laundry
There are three basic ways to approach laundry. I guess you could say four if you choose to have no system and only do laundry randomly when you run out of something to wear. Since we’re talking about systems, we’ll scratch the random method and look at three ways to handle laundry in a systematic, functional manner.
System #1: Once-a-Week Laundry
This system would be to pick a day of the week to be “Laundry Day.” On laundry day, a good portion of time will be spent washing, drying, folding, and putting away laundry. Let’s look at the pros and cons of handling laundry once a week.
PROS:
- Everything is clean at once; there’s a psychological sigh of relief once it’s done.
- Easy to plan and put together outfits when everything is clean at once.
- No laundry baskets of clothes cluttering up the house every day of the week.
CONS:
- That’s a LOT of folding. If you’ve got a family, the laundry piles up fast. You will have a lot of clothes to fold and put away all at once.
- You need enough of everything to last at least a week. If something comes up to delay laundry day (that would never happen right!?) your teenage daughter will for sure have a meltdown.
- It can be overwhelming and result in clothes not getting put away – piles of laundry that just live in the laundry basket or on a bed.
System #2: Daily laundry
This system would involve doing a load (or more depending on your situation) every day. I used this method for a while and found it worked best to toss in a load of laundry first thing in the morning as part of my morning routine.
PROS:
- You always have something clean to wear!
- No need to remember if it’s laundry day or not; you get into a rhythm and routine of doing laundry every day.
- You don’t have a huge pile of clothes to fold and put away all at once.
CONS:
- You have some laundry to fold and put away every day.
- The laundry can feel even more never-ending; it’s truly never done.
- It’s more difficult to involve your kids and teach them to do their own laundry.
System #3: Somewhere in between daily and once-a-week
I have used both systems of handling laundry over the years. And both were fine! What works best for me at this stage is a combo system, more than once a week, but not daily. I really like having all my clothes clean on Sunday because I like to be able to plan outfits. But dealing with 5-8 loads of laundry in one day became too much. I used a daily method for a while, but found that I struggled with forgetting about a load of clothes in the washing machine too many times. (If you’ve ever done that…you’re holding your nose along with me right now!)
My current system is to wash clothes on Saturday and sheets and towels on Thursday. And…I’m teaching my girls to do their own laundry. My 11-year old is fully capable, but needs lots of prompting. The younger two still need my help. It is a work in progress, but it requires less of my time than ever before, so it is very doable to launder all the clothes in one day.
How to Decide Which Method is Best For You
Here’s the thing. The system you use to handle laundry isn’t fixed. Do what works for you right now, and change it when it doesn’t work anymore.
To help you decide what might work best for you right now, ask yourself these questions.
- Is it important to you to have all your clothes clean at once? (ONCE A WEEK)
- Can you block out a chunk of time to fold and put away all the laundry at once?
(YES=ONCE A WEEK, NO=DAILY OR IN-BETWEEN) - Is it too overwhelming to deal with a huge pile of laundry at once? Do you already know it will get dumped on the floor instead of folded and put away? (DAILY OR IN-BETWEEN)
- Which is psychologically more appealing to you?
a. Tackle a large task and complete it, knowing I don’t have to do it again for a whole week.
b. Complete small pieces of a project daily, knowing it will be ongoing but manageable.
Regardless of whether you decide to tackle all the loads at once or spread them out across multiple days, there are ways you can make the process just a tiny bit easier.
Laundry Tips to Make Your Life Easier
DO…
- wear clothes more than once before washing
(exceptions: socks, underwear, sweaty gym clothes, anything that smells – you get it, right!?) - keep separate “dark” and “light” hampers to pre-sort laundry if you have the space
(I use this laundry hamper to sort darks, whites, & towels.) - give each child a hamper/basket and teach them to do their own laundry
(for sure have them start folding and putting away YOUNG!) - pare down the amount of clothes you own
(If you have less clothes, you will not be able to go three weeks without doing laundry and then let that pile of laundry sit in the corner for another three weeks while you dress out of the laundry basket!) - turn jeans inside out before washing
- wash (almost) everything in cold water
- wash sheets in warm/hot water
DON’T…
- use a spare set of sheets and make the beds while you are washing sheets
(If you have to put sheets on your bed before sleeping in it, you won’t leave the clean sheets in the laundry basket for a week.) - sort at all!
(especially with kids clothes; unless it’s white and something I would bleach, check the tag, but it’s usually fine) - buy clothing that needs special care (especially for the kids)
- fold kids clothes
(This one is hard for a Type-A organizer like me, but little by little, I let go of folding my kids clothes and just use bins for sorting. Once they start dressing themselves, the drawers are a disaster anyway, so stop folding and refolding to keep their drawers perfect. Just keep tops and bottoms separated and let them put their own clothes away.)
Make Laundry Day Easier with These Tools
Top Tip: Do Less Laundry
I have three girls. Now I don’t know how it works with boys, but my girls have all gone through a stage of dressing up and changing clothes multiple times in one day. If there’s one thing you can do to reduce the number of loads of laundry you do in a week, it’s this. Reduce the amount of clothes you are washing! You will have to tell them repeatedly, so go ahead and be a Nagging Nellie on this. Your kids do not need to put every article of clothing in the laundry hamper. Something that has only been worn once, inside your house, and is not dirty, does not need to be washed.
If you wear your jeans and sweatshirts a few times between washes, you can significantly reduce the accumulation of weekly laundry.
After you try a system of handling laundry, if it doesn’t work for your family or for your stage of life, try something different. I still feel like our family of five goes through a lot of laundry in a weeks time, but having a system for handling laundry on a weekly basis makes it less overwhelming.
BONUS TIP: Use the time while you fold laundry to listen to an audiobook or podcast. This is one time you can actually multi-task efficiently!
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