Laundry Day

Until recently, I had a lot of clothes. The nice thing about having a lot of clothes is that I could avoid doing my laundry for up to two weeks.* Although it felt nice to purge the closet, fewer clothes meant that I'd have to do laundry more often.

You know what, though? It turns out it isn't so bad.

See, I have come to realize that it's not the actual doing of the laundry that I despise. I have no problem throwing some clothes into a machine and sitting back while it does its work. No, what I dread is the sorting (after two weeks, there are too many clothes for one load), folding, hanging, and putting away.

This is what my typical laundry "day" used to look like:

1. Sort clothes (either by general color or by "what's closer to the top of the hamper/what's closer to the bottom").

2. Throw one load into the washer while the other load(s) sit on the bathroom floor.

3. Five hours later, remember that I have clothes in the washer.

4. Move clothes into dryer.

5. Determine whether anything else (besides the loads on the floor in the bathroom) needs to be washed. If so, return to step 1. If not, continue to step 6.

6. Don't bother getting the clothes out of the dryer.

7. Next day, rummage through the clothes in the dryer until I find something not too wrinkled to wear that day. Close the dryer door.

8. Repeat step 7 for a couple more days, or until something else needs to be put in the dryer, or until Steve complains about the clothes on the bathroom floor, or until I have depleted my supply of clean yet unwrinkled clothes to wear.

9. Put clothes in the dryer on touch-up.

10. Two hours later, remember that the touch-up cycle ended 1 hour and 42 minutes ago. Put clothes on touch-up again.

11. Half an hour later, remember the clothes had been on touch-up and decide they're probably still warm enough that I can smooth them out without having too many wrinkles.

12. Dump clothes on the bed and smooth out shirts. Put everything else in a pile.

13. If Steve is at work, leave stuff on the bed until he gets home. Secretly hope he works overtime.

14. When Steve gets home, move the piles onto a chair.

15. Eventually Steve complains about the clothes on the chair, and I grudgingly put everything away.

Total time to do a load of laundry: About one week.

Here's the thing, though: When you hardly have any clothes, the annoying steps are reduced/eliminated.

No need to sort, because everything fits in one load!

Folding/putting stuff on hangers takes only a minute, because there aren't that many items to deal with!

Putting stuff away, also, takes almost no time because there are almost no clothes!
It's almost refreshing.

(*Please note that I'm talking about my laundry. The kids' laundry--especially the diapers--get done much more often. And Steve does his own. It's in our prenup.)