Something that unites us all, no matter where we live, is that every single one of us has to deal with our laundry one way or another.  Maybe this is why it’s so fascinating to travelers to see how people in other parts of the world manage their laundry.  (The photo here was taken in Venice.)

When I created a laundry routine, it started as a way to gradually eliminate the huge clothing clutter pile that had taken over our laundry room, with satellite piles in the bathroom and bedrooms.  Instead of panic laundry marathons once or twice a week, I resolved to wash, dry and put away two loads of laundry every single day until the clutter was gone.  First thing in the morning I would start a wash, throw it in the dryer and start a second wash as soon as I got home later in the day, and then dry the final load and fold, sort, and put away everything while I was watching TV in the evening.

We’ve moved several times since then, and our laundry facilities have varied tremendously, but the habit of keeping up with the laundry every day or almost every day has stuck with me.

Laundry Strategies and Tips

• I’ve found that if I keep my dirty laundry in more than one place (hampers in the kids’ bedrooms for example) the laundry creeps up on me and before I realize it there is more than I can do in one day.  Therefore, we have a single hamper in the bathroom and I get the kids to bring their dirty laundry out every morning when they tidy their rooms.  (When the kids’ rooms were still messy, I would sweep through once a day and pick up their dirty laundry for the hamper.)
• I don’t separate the colors from the whites until it is time to wash, but you might find that one of those hampers with two or three compartments saves you sorting time — as long as everyone in your family is on the same page about sorting laundry.
• If you have your own washer and dryer (or better yet, a clothesline for drying) then you can do laundry every day.  If you live alone or have a small family, perhaps you’ll choose to skip a day here or there when there isn’t a full load of dirty laundry.  You can make it a daily routine to check the laundry baskets every morning, or whatever works for you.
• If you have to use a laundromat or a shared laundry room, and you have enough clothes and linens, it might work better for you to pick one or two days a week and take everything that is dirty.  I hate laundromats, and it helps to have a really juicy novel to read while I’m waiting for the wash and dry cycles.
• This past summer we moved to a new country and we spent a couple of months in temporary housing that did not have a washer, but it did have clotheslines.  Remember, I hate laundromats.  Since it was summertime and we’re in a warm and sunny climate, I decided to get a plastic tub and try washing our clothes by hand.  Believe it or not, it worked just fine.  Even with five people in the house I was able to keep up with the laundry by washing a couple of loads by hand (and foot — think grape pressing!) every morning.
• Sometimes I get lazy about the final laundry step, folding and putting away. I put the dry, clean laundry on the bed (which I make first thing every morning) as a visual cue to encourage me to fold it and put it away before bedtime.  Usually this works, but occasionally I just move the pile and then deal with it the next day   Folding laundry is a great job for the kids to help out with!

Remember:

Choose no more than one tweak per month – don’t try to pile them on!  Practicing a single tweak for at least a full month gives you the best chance of forming a real habit and life change.  Do not try to add another tweak until the previous tweak has become a habitual part of your life (this can sometimes take longer than a month).

This is all about loving yourself and creating a joyful life! Therefore, when choosing a new tweak to practice, pick one that is appealing and gives you a sense of anticipation.

Read all the laundry posts here.

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Related posts:

• Dealing with Clothing Clutter
• Tweak: Declutter Daily
• Tweak: Make the Bed
• Tweak: Protein for Breakfast
• Tweak: Daily Personal Grooming

It’s not that I hadn’t been doing laundry, mind you.  A couple of times a week I would wash three or four loads in a panicked laundry marathon.  (Sunday nights were popular because it would dawn on me, “What the heck are we all going to wear tomorrow??!”)  But since I was doing laundry under pressure, I would go through the huge heap trying to piece together enough outfits to get us all through a couple of days.  I couldn’t just wash everything because there was so much dirty laundry.

What happens when you can’t find missing socks in the chaos (hint: check under the kids’ beds and even between their sheets!)?   You guessed it — it seemed like I was always asking Martin to pop into Walmart and pick up yet another six-pack of socks or underwear because there were never enough.  When you’ve forgotten several favorite pairs of jeans or dresses at the bottom of a heap of clothes, it’s easy to think that you need to shop for more clothes because you have nothing to wear.

When I decided something had to be done,  I started a new routine:  washing, drying and putting away two loads of laundry per day, every day. In my large capacity washer, this was about twice as much laundry as our family of five generated on an ongoing basis, so I figured I’d be catching up on the backlog of laundry at the rate of one load a day.

Well, I did two loads of laundry a day almost every single day, and Mount Washmore gradually — very gradually — became smaller and smaller.  Believe it or not, it took more than a month to get to “bare floor” status.  This means that our family of five had more than 30 loads worth of backlogged dirty laundry!

Decluttering the Clothing

As I sorted and folded the clean laundry every day, I separated each item into one of three piles:

• Keep: the item was in good condition, still fit, and looked nice;
• Throw Away: the item was torn, stained, worn out, etc.;
• Donate: the item was in good condition but no longer fit or, if it did fit, it didn’t suit its owner.

Why didn’t I just trash the junky clothes without washing them?  This is where the crazy comes in     To this day, I find it nearly impossible to throw out an item of clothing that is dirty.  What would the garbagemen think??

I have to tell you that it was very challenging also to give some of the clothing away, my clothing in particular.  What if I gained weight and needed those bigger clothes?  What if I lost weight and could wear the smaller clothes again?  Well, the truth of the matter is that most of the clothes that didn’t fit me were also very dated, and if you look at your clothing critically you may find the same thing.  This anxiety that I had was compounded by the fact that I had suffered poverty in my teen and young adult years and I worried that I would find myself too broke to buy more clothing in the future when I needed it.  Well, that worry proved to be unfounded and I now truly believe that clearing out the clutter opens the door to abundance in our lives.

So I pushed forward through the anxiety and continued to trash and donate all the clothing that was in bad shape, didn’t fit, or that we just didn’t like.  Every time a donation bag was filled I put it in my minivan and made a point of dropping it off the next time I went by the clothing donation box.  I did not keep count but I know that I must have donated at least 12 huge bags of clothing.  It was unbelievable.  Even after tossing and donating every item we didn’t love, the whole family had more good, clean clothing than we knew — and so many socks that I did not buy socks again for at least a couple of years!

A nice side effect of dealing with the clothing clutter?  My daily habit of doing laundry stuck with me and became my Laundry Routine.

* Thanks to the wonderful FlyLady for this unforgettable expression.

Read all the rest of the posts about daily decluttering here.

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Click here to find out more about our private, supportive Member Forum.

Photo credit:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillslivingroom/

Related posts:

• Tweak: Laundry Routine
• Tweak: Declutter Daily
• The Top 6 Non-Reasons for Clutter