Laundry Habits

 I loved Stephany's post about laundry and al the comments, so I thought I'd write my own.

We do A LOT of laundry, you guys. But! Laundry doesn't feel like a burden, and I wonder if this is because we do so much that we are immune and if we took it away we would suddenly have so much time? OR maybe it's because we do it so incrementally that it really doesn't take up much time? Either way. Here it goes:

Ben and I do all the laundry. Probably the kids should/could in a gradual-release-of-responsibility on the road to adulthood kind of way. But also, I didn't do laundry until I lived on my own, and it's not hard to figure out. Ben also grew up never laundering, and he is, like, so good at it now, guys. I mean. He did have a 2-bedroom townhouse in grad school and one of the rooms was where he threw dirty clothes and eventually he couldn't open the door and he would just buy new underwear (at Abercrombie LOL) when he ran out. BUT THAT WAS JUST A BLIP.

We definitely separate by color and also by weight (towels and heavy sweatshirts separate from more delicate things, jeans sometimes on their own (with other jeans obvi) or with those heavier items, color depending).

We use Tide Free and Clear liquid and are basically happy with it. Minnie has eczema, so we will just stick with this one that doesn't bother her skin even though I can't buy it at Costco. We also use good old Clorox bleach with our whites (all of our bathrooms have white towels; the boys and Ben frequently wear white undershirts, and many of us have white socks, so we usually have one or 2 white loads a day. We wash our towels after every use because it is hard to separate whose is whose, and, yuck. Even though each bathroom has different white towels, each bathroom has at least 2 people who use it, and I have no patience for non-hand towels towels hanging up in a bathroom. Plus I have no doubt that most of the kids would leave their wet and crumpled towels in a puddle of steam and pee on the bathroom floor and just the thought of someone drying their face with a towel that was flung casually near the base of the toilet is too much for me). We use Clorox color-safe bleach on our colored clothes. These 3 things are really all we need.

In addition to 1-2 loads of whites, every day we usually run a load of bright colored pool towels (with swimmers and divers, someone is always using a pool towel even though it's winter), PJ's, cotton play dresses, leggings, and sweatshirts; and another load of blacks, grays, and jeans. Sometimes the kitchen rags go with whites just to be bleached (which is why all of my kitchen rags look like hell and I have a few special COMPANY RAGS in a drawer LOL), but the kitchen towels (we use SO MANY OF THESE A DAY MY GOODNESS) go with general towels/brights.

But don't think 4 loads a day is it! HA! Every week, I wash the pillowcases, sheets and blankets on my bed and the pillowcases, sheets and blankets on Bens bed (2 loads), Minnie's sheet, pillowcase, and blanket (1 load), Harry and Jack's sheets, pillowcases, blankets, and comforters (3 loads), Dorothy and Cooper's pillowcases, sheets, blankets, and comforters (3 loads), and the bathroom rugs (1 load). I do the sheets on 3 separate days and the rugs on Sundays, so the actual loads per day really varies.

It all comes out to... 37-ish? loads a week. LOL LOL LOLOL. That number is huge.

How do we make it manageable?

Keep just1 hamper in the whole house, so nothing can pile up. 

Use the quick cycle on the washer which only takes 33 minutes and uses less water.

Fold and put away EVERY SINGLE DAY. 

I have timed this task and it only takes 15 minutes start to finish. I do the laundry completely the days I am home; Ben does it completely the days he is home, and when we are both home, we both work on making sure to switch loads, and we usually fold together. Then I put away the girls' clothes, and he does the boys' clothes, and we split the kitchen/bathrooms, etc. I do all the sheets laundry because Ben claims he doesn't care if any sheets are dirty, and I know he changed his bed NEVER in grad school (and probably undergrad), so I am just going to be clean and let the patriarchy win that round. Every bed in the house has a full back up set of everything that is laundered weekly, so I am not waiting around for clean sheets before I can finish flipping a bed or anything like that. It's pretty quick and painless, top bunks aside.

What does laundry look like in your house?