Laundry Done – My Way

Is laundry hard for you?  I know getting laundry done is hard for a lot of people.  I have had some trouble here and there, but I usually keep up with mine pretty well.  When we were first married, we lived in a studio apartment and didn’t have a washer or dryer.  We went together one night a week to do our laundry at a local laundromat.  This only lasted about 8 months before we moved into a small house with a laundry room.  It was a large laundry room considering the size of the house was only about 900 sq ft total.  We hung up a shelf at one end with a rod under it so that we could hang up our shirts to dry.  The top of the shelf was great for storage.  We have been hanging up our clothes to dry ever since then.

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We started because my husband is a very tall man with a long torso.  It is hard to find shirts long enough for him and they are not cheap when we do locate them.  They shrink when they are dried, some are worse than others, but almost all clothing shrinks over time when dried in a dryer.  We have found that our clothes last longer and look better by hanging up to dry.  Another bonus of hanging the clothes up to dry, it cuts out a step in the laundry.  I wash, hang up and I am done.  The only downfall is having room to hang them until they dry.  It doesn’t take long for them to dry (usually 1-2 days) if there is heat or air conditioning going, but in the few weeks during spring and fall that we are able go without heat or air, it can take longer for them to dry.  Also, be sure to use Plastic Hangers or Flocked Hangers, I use a combination of both.  Wire hangers will eventually leave rust marks on your clothes if you hang them up to dry.

The main thing is to make sure they are dry before you put them in your closet unless you have a lot of extra room in your closet so they can finish drying.  My mom doesn’t have a laundry room, her washer and dryer are in the kitchen, so she has always dried most of her clothes.  In the last few years she has started hanging some items to dry and she just has a rod over the bathtub and hangs her clothes in there to dry.   The first year in college my son shared a room so he dried his clothes and couldn’t wear a lot of them by the end of the year.  The next year he changed dorms and had a small room to himself.  He bought a Corner Clothing Rack so he would have a place to hang his clothes up to dry.   If you don’t have the perfect laundry room, you can usually figure something out if hang drying your clothes is important to you.  We use 2 free standing Clothing Racks and a Drying Rack in this house.  I will do a tour of my laundry room and show how I have mine set up in a future post.

I have always done most of the laundry because I have either worked from home or worked part-time most of our married life.  I like to sort my laundry into light, dark, and red clothes.  I usually wash all the clothes in one or two days a week.  This used to be on Thursday or Friday because I was off those days the most often.  When I worked full-time, I often had to wash on Saturday or Sunday.  Since I have been at home again, I have been doing the laundry on Monday or Tuesday.  The reason that I don’t have a set laundry day, is that my schedule changes so much.  Sometime I do all the laundry on Monday and never have to enter the laundry room again that week, but other weeks I may end up doing a load each day or waiting until Wednesday because I have something else come up on the other days.  That is why I moved wash day to the beginning of the week so I have time to make up missed days and not have to do laundry on the weekend.

My husband has work clothes that need to be washed separately since they can be oily and tend to smell like the oil.  We decided early on in our marriage that he was responsible for his own work clothes, he had uniforms back then and I had trouble keeping up with when they needed to be washed.  After a few times of him getting mad because I hadn’t washed them before he needed them, it became his responsibility because it was easier for him to keep up with when he needed them washed.  When my oldest started football at school and needed to wash his workout clothes multiple times a week, it became his responsibility to wash them.  My middle son has workout clothes from football, certain clothes for work, uniforms for games, etc… I would go crazy trying to keep up with when everyone needed certain clothes each week.  So, the general rule in our house is – If it can’t wait until wash day, wash it yourself!

Since they wash a some of their clothes during the week and we have a large load capacity washer, I am usually able to wash one dark load and one light load each week.  We don’t usually wear enough reds for a load each week, so they only get washed every 2-3 weeks.  On the weeks we don’t need the reds washed, I will wash something extra like coats or blankets.  We all have an area of the hanging space so it is easy for everyone to find and take their clothes to their room once they are dry.  I used to put the kids clothes away, but now that they are old enough, it is their responsibility to remove all their dry clothes from the laundry room, place the empty hangers back in the laundry room, and make sure their clothes are in the correct laundry basket before wash day.  This is not done perfectly and not without reminders, but this is the expectation.

We all have enough clothes to be able to skip a week of laundry, but we don’t.  We even wash clothes when we are on vacation since we usually have a small washer/dryer combo in our rooms.  This means we don’t have to take as many clothes with us on vacation and we don’t have a huge pile of dirty clothes when we get home.  This makes settling back in at home so much more pleasant, since we usually have to go back to school and work the next day.  Keeping the laundry done just makes the house run smoother, and lowers the stress in the house if everyone has clean clothes everyday for school, sports and work.

If you have a great laundry system already set up, then great, if not, you need one.  My way may not be the best way for you, but hopefully hearing how I deal with the laundry will help you figure out what will work for you.  That is what everyone has to do, figure out the best way to keep your house clean, the family fed and the laundry washed.  These are the things that never go away and have to be done on a regular basis or it will get out of control very fast.

You might also like Should Kids Do Chores? and A Better Life.

How do you keep your laundry done?  Any tips?  Leave a comment below and let me know.

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