Taming the Laundry Monster

Is laundry the untamed monster in your household? Letting that monster run rampant can quickly become chaos, frustration, shame, anxiety. I want to do it better, faster, and with less stress, don’t you?

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Housework is part of how we serve and love our families, but it can feel disastrously overwhelming. It is the job that is never finished. Sometimes, late at night, I have a moment the house is clean, organized, and smells good. The laundry is finished, and the dishes are done.

A brief moment of housework nirvana that I bask in deliciously, the master of all I survey . . .

.  .  .  for about ten seconds. Because if I look longer than that I’ll see the blinds that need dusting or the baseboards I’ve been ignoring.

I found that I would get really stressed by thinking about all the things I could be doing to have a cleaner house. My anxiety level would go up and I would become very irritable. It wasn’t a good way to function.

Instead of perfection, use the Good Enough standard

So I’ve started using the good enough standard – is it good enough to keep my husband happy and make his life easier? is it good enough to keep us healthy? Is it good enough to be welcoming to guests without feeling like a museum.

Our homes are supposed to serve us, be a shelter and refuge, not an idol that we break our backs to serve.

Whether you’re a neat-nick or not, getting housework done quickly gives us more time to do the things that matter, like read stories and kiss cheeks because those days will be gone before we know it.

Several of my friends have been struggling with the sheer volume of laundry this week. The piles and piles of it gathering makes them feel like an army is mounting an offensive.

I’ve found a solution that works for my family to tame the laundry monster.

I’ve divided up my laundry to one load per day (larger families may need two loads per day) One day it is my husband’s things, the next our daughter’s, then mine, then towels, the next sheets, etc.

First thing in the morning, I start a load of laundry. You could even put it in the night before and start the washing machine in the morning. By the time I’ve brushed my teeth, gotten dressed, etc. the load is ready for the dryer.

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Folding is the longest part of this process, but I’ve realized that I spend more time dreading it than just getting it done.

Instead of dreading the folding, I save a sermon, podcast, or Hallmark movie for folding time. And I pray for five more minutes of energy to just get it done.

I found that I can fold almost an entire load of laundry in about five minutes. It feels like less work as well when I approach it in essentially five-minute increments: 5 minutes to gather and put in the wash, 5 minutes to transfer to the dryer, 5 minutes to fold.  I spend 10-20 minutes a day and never have a laundry monster.

When I open the dryer, I start pulling out the clothes and separating them into piles: socks, underwear, shirts, pants. Anything that doesn’t fit in one of those categories gets folded and set aside. Then I fold all the pants since those go the fastest.

T-shirts are the largest laundry group in our house, so I found a way to fold them faster.

Then I stack or fold all the underwear and any miscellaneous items left before tackling the socks. I lay them all out and start to match them. By laying them all out before I start to fold them, I eliminate digging through the pile to find matches.

Unmatched socks are kept in the laundry room for a few more cycles of wash then discarded.

Plus, once I got ahead of the curve, I had days I didn’t have any laundry to do . . . whoa.

Make a plan, stick to it, you’ll find that your laundry pile will shrink, and if it doesn’t, that you will at least have peace about it.