When it comes to laundry, I think most of us can relate to this meme:
Of all the chores, laundry seems the most overwhelming to me. There are just so many steps – collect it , sort it (I’ve heard – we skip that here), wash it, dry it, fold it or hang it, and finally put it away.
Getting all that accomplished when you’re out of the house for 10 hours a day without saving it all for the weekend is all the more challenging.
When we were cloth diapering, on diaper washing days, I would do the 20 minute rinse right after we took Leah’s bedtime diaper off. By the time she was finished getting dressed and ready, the rinse would be done and I would put the detergent in and put it on the correct settings and then choose “Delay Wash” so that it would finish around the same time we would get home. That way the clean diapers wouldn’t be sitting wet in the dryer all day waiting to be dried. Then first thing I would when I got home is transfer them to the dryer for the first round of drying.
A couple weeks ago, I realized I could use this same concept on our regular laundry. Since Leah is using less diapers now, we aren’t doing cloth diapers loads every other day anymore which opens up the washer to be used for other loads more often.
My new process is to load up the washer and get it ready to go before I go to bed. Then I set the “Delay Wash” so that the load finishes before we leave for work & school in the morning. Then before we leave, we move the load into the dryer and get it going. Even if we need to do another fluff to get rid of the last bit of dampness, it will be done in plenty of time for us to work on folding after the girls go to bed.
We’ve only been doing it this way a few weeks but so far it has been really nice to have both the washer and dryer working so that it’s ready when we are as opposed to trying to get to it when its finished doing its thing and not letting it sit there because we’ve forgotten about it.
How do you keep the laundry monster from taking over your house?
