MY BOGGY BLOG: find your way through the murk

Doing a Laundry Dance

Imagine Charlie Brown's Snoopy dancing with joy as he does with his head back and a sublime grin on his face.

For many years now, aided by the onslaught of depression, laundry has been a tough nut in our home. The laundry pile always looked like a mountain and I would procrastinate and just plain forget about doing it until the desperation point (i.e., I have no underwear left). The laundry room always stunk of damp dingy clothing. I tried to get the kids to help, and that was just as much work. DH helped a lot, but basically resorted to doing his own laundry seperately because of the tensions our laundry situation was causing. Basically, if you threw down a favorite shirt, you might not see it again for, ahem, a few months.

Need I mention that the laundry pile was a source of shame and anxiety for me?

It is only in the last few weeks that I have come up with what I think is a great solution for my family. I looked at our old laundry ritual-- basically, it was everyone throws down their clothes to the laundry room, where it was to be sorted into whites, light colors, dark colors, etc. Then it was washed, dried, and brought up to the living room to be sorted into piles for each person. By the time we got to this phase, there were usually 7 baskets of clean laundry that needed to be sorted, another huge job. And then getting everyone to put away their clean clothes was another problem.

Our new system is much simpler. Everyone has a hamper to put their dirty laundry in. When it is full, it is to be brought downstairs to be washed-- if there is enough clothing, it can be divided into lights and darks. If not, just dump it all in (this is obviously not a perfectionistic way to do laundry!). When washed and dried, then that person can take all their clean clothes and put them away. Note how the need to sort the laundry at all is eliminated. :-)

Eventually, I hope the kids will be responsible for their own laundry. Older DS and DD can probably manage that now, but younger DS is not anywhere near there yet. I am just happy because my laundry room floor is free of a mountain and the smell is gone! And best of all, this is a laundry system I can live with. It takes the big chore of laundry for me and reduces it down to a simple chore.

You can hum along the "Linus and Lucy" tune while I dance!

Posted by sapphire at October 23, 2004 09:56 AM