My laundry management system

Laundry never stops. My utility area is like a factory: working everyday producing clean clothes. Putting the clothes in and out of the machine, that’s not what takes time! It’s the collecting, sorting and putting away that does!

Florence

2/11/20242 min read

My system is: one basket per person / per room, and I do laundry every day. It’s simple.

Everyone in the family has a basket that contains one load of laundry so I not only collect clothes from one place but I also put away clothes back in one place! No need to sort the clean and dry clothes into piles destined to different bedrooms! I don’t need to go multiple places to put away one load of laundry! The dirty clothes come in one bag from one place and the clean clothes go back in the same bag to the same place! So efficient!

The utility room also has a bag for the kitchen towels, napkins, cloths, cotton pads that are washed in the same hot water load. These items are all stored in chest of drawers in the utility space, next to the washing machine. Efficient!

We have 2 bathrooms, and I run a load of laundry per bathroom (guest and bath towels, mats, and robes).

The vast majority of the clothes we have go in the same 40 degree load with two exceptions:

  • I have woollen knits that require a cold wash - this is a compromise I am ready to make because I want to be warm in the winter and knits don’t need ironing (this is optimalism).

  • The kids’ uniforms have a compulsory white shirt, so I isolate the whites into a basket that I keep on top of my washing machine and, when the basket is full, I wash those in a dedicated load. I don’t push my choices onto my family and my daughter has several white tee-shirts that get wash in that load.

I do laundry everyday day. I figure I have to do 10 loads a week on average (note: that I have a European size washing machine, so not huge!): clothes for each person, the whites, my knits, the bathrooms, the beddings, the utility room laundry bag, plus, occasionally, the throw blankets, the jackets etc…

I do laundry everyday because I work 5 days a week, I don’t have the option to choose a “laundry day” and I refuse to be chained to the washing machine at the weekend , every weekend. I want to do something more interesting with my life!

My goal is no laundry at the weekend for me. Now, my partner and my kids do their own laundry, and they choose to do it at the weekend.

Every day, I shift the clean and dry load of laundry back to the room it belongs, transfer the clean but wet load to the tumble dryer or dryer rack, and start a dirty load that I have collected from one room. This process takes me a few minutes. I repeat it every weekday.