Tuesday, March 14, 2023

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?




17 comments:

  1. Sarah, I'm in awe. I could never. It all sounds perfectly reasonable, and although you've explained how it's done, it's still a bit overwhelming. Laundry is the first big chore I let my kids take on from the time they were 8-9. Not proud of it, but we had domestic help growing up, so I never learned to do stuff, and while I do everything now, laundry is my least favorite and everyone does their own. Bed clothes are the one category I need to keep an eye on. We have giant hampers for towels, table napkins and kitchen towels and those get done once every two weeks.
    My clothes probably every... month? I have a decades-old wardrobe and won't run out of clean clothes.
    My only laundry hack is that I like to put a few drops of essential oils when clothes go in the dryer (peppermint for kitchen stuff, lavender for linens, peony/rose for my clothes). It gives me a nice lift when I catch a whiff.

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    1. This comment is full of great ideas! Like, I KNOW the kids should do their own and I don’t know why I am so reluctant to let laundry go. And the essential oil— this is genius.

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  2. LOL forever at Ben BUYING NEW UNDERWEAR instead of doing laundry.

    This was so fascinating to read! I am 100% with you on getting grossed out by towels. My kid is constantly dropping hers on the floor after she showers and I just don't get it. It's supposed to dry your CLEAN BODY, why would you drop it on the not-clean floor???

    Swimming towels gross me out even more, because those end up WHO knows where in a public space and ew ew ew. (Also, I cannot stand swimming pools, which to me are just liquid collections of scabs and boogers and hair. So if I could toss my entire child into a sanitizing shower immediately after she gets out of the pool I 100% WOULD DO THAT.)

    You and Ben are clearly laundry masters. Great work.

    By the way, I fully support whatever is simplest. But Carla is nine and she sorts her own laundry, can run the laundry although I have to reach the detergent for her (it is in a high cupboard above the sink), folds her own stuff (if I make her, which is not always), and strips and re-makes her own bed. Except the duvet cover, which I wrestle onto the duvet myself or with help from her or my husband. I'm not sure it helps anything go faster, but it's not a huge hindrance either.

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    1. I am SURE they could do it, but maybe it’s a control thing? Like they wouldn’t do it on my schedule?

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  3. I'm going to write my own post about doing laundry because it's absolutely fascinating to read about how other people do it. Our washer and dryer came with the house and they are old and they suck and even a single load of laundry takes forever because our dryer almost dries things and then we have to restart it like five times to get it to actually dry things.

    MOVING ON.

    I have very sensitive skin. We have always used Era, but one time we thought we would be clever and use Tide Free & Clear to see if it would help. Ha ha ha! I broke out into a rash IMMEDIATELY and we switched back to Era. I almost think my skin is just used to what it's used to and it could be trained to use other things, but I can't get past the rashes and hives to get there.

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    1. No— if you find something that works and does not irritate— definitely stick to it!

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  4. Wow, that is a lot of laundry! But I guess with five kids, it's to be expected. I do NOT do my husband's laundry, but I do generally do my kids' laundry, although they know how to do it and everything. It's not, as you say, hard to figure out. We are not scrubbing on washboards/ using wringer washers or anything here. I do sheets and pillowcases weekly, I do towels every 4 days or so, more often in the summer when I shower usually twice a day (cannot STAND the feeling of sunscreen in bed, must shower it off before bed). I usually do a load of clothes, non-towel non-sheet clothes pretty much every day. This includes tea towels/ dishcloths/ microfibre cloths for cleaning Maybe, six such loads a week? So all in that's probably 8 or 9 loads a week. I fold and put away IMMEDIATELY or else all is lost. Well, I fold and put on the kids' beds and they put it away because I do not want to be a mother that goes through their drawers. There are things I don't want to know! I mean, probably there's nothing of note in those drawers, but you feel me.

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    1. I agree about sun screen— also bug spray. Yuck.

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  5. First. I loved reading this. I find posts about laundry shockingly entertaining/interesting. Second. I shouldn't open my mouth about my process because IT WOULD DISTRESS YOU. Let's just say I don't change sheets weekly...and the rest is just too horrible to say. You have seen my laundry game and raised by 10,000 points. Gold stars.
    I do about 4 loads a week, I think? And even that feels like too much! I'm giving my daughter a laundry basket in a few weeks for her birthday because - SURPRISE, HONEY, now you get to do your own laundry. My husband does a lot of his laundry, especially when he's heading away on a business trip. He has a very specific way he likes things done and I am not careful (NO separation or whites or darks for me...).

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    1. I NEVER check pockets, so that has led to some laundry mishaps for sure.

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  6. Rachel7:47 PM

    Our most complicated laundry routine is we have two kids in cloth diapers so those need to be washed every other day. That's an express cycle, followed by the longest, hottest wash, followed by two dryer cycles because cloth diapers are thick. I mostly do the diapers and put them away the same day. We use special detergent for these.

    For regular laundry, my husband separates stuff that is warm/goes in the dryer and stuff that is cold/gets hung to dry. He probably does one cold load a week and four or five warm loads. We change sheets weekly or biweekly depending on how dirty they seem. I generally fold and we both out stuff away.

    It feels like a lot, but kids generate so much laundry.

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  7. Oh, I like this! I'll do a post and link back. Your ideas about not letting it pile up and folding and putting away the same day are very smart. Because otherwise you might get avalanched and never be found again.

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  8. Anonymous6:34 PM

    Lisa here. OMG 37 loads!! We do 3 total but there are only 4 of us and we only have little kids at this point and their clothes are still so very small! We generally do a load/day fri-sun. I used to be particular about whites being separated from colored/darks but my husband never had that approach so now everything goes in together. I know this will change when our kids have activities and such. I grew up in a family the same size as yours but we were spread by 17 years from youngest to oldest so we weren’t all under one roof for long - only a year and then the older one headed off to college gradually. I learned to do laundry when I was probably a tween or young teen? It was one of my jobs during the summer. I didn’t mind it and I still don’t. I fold my clothes and the boys. Phil deals with his own!

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  9. Yay! I'm so glad you wrote this post. It's fun to see how laundry varies from family to family - doing the laundry for such a big family is a TASK, man. I think it's something you just have to stay on top of and be viligant about or things could get dire very quickly.

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  10. I. Am. Agog. Holy moley. I mean, this makes complete sense given the size of your family, but wow. Just wow.

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  11. I've enjoyed reading about everybody's laundry routine (while catching up on two-weeks worth of blog posts - haha) and I must say; YOU DO A LOT OF LAUNDRY (ok, I understand, you're a big family too). I can imagine it's a lot of work but it seems like you have figured out a system where you don't notice it as a huge task?!

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