A Load a Day Keeps the Crazy Away!

A load-a-day keeps the crazy away, but how? I am a married mama of two young kids who works outside the home. The biggest housekeeping struggle I have fought is laundry. Despite my best efforts to see just how long we can go without doing a load, these people I live with, they demand clean clothes!  My stories of battling laundry are almost too dark and embarrassing to disclose. Let’s just say I once had to bag up laundry because we had people coming over. You get the picture enough said.

I had tried every approach under the sun including seeing if eventually, a sweet little fairy would stop by while I was gone so that when I walked back into my house, everything would be magically folded and put away.  I’m sure no surprise to you, that never happened.  So what’s a girl to do?  Like so often here on the blog I happily pass along to you what I have learned with much trial and error over many years in hopes I can reduce the learning curve for at least one person.

The most time efficient, and easiest way of doing laundry is one load-a-day.

It seems so simple it should be common sense but when put it in the mix with everything else we have to do it can seem easier to group up the laundry and just jump head first into it all at one dedicated time each week.  I have found that I spend significantly more time negotiating the space needed to complete that much at one time.

For some of you, I know this an approach that works fantastically well.  By all means, don’t change what’s working!  Me being someone who spends so much time outside of my home when I’m there I don’t want to be neck deep in any one task.  It just doesn’t make me feel as productive at the end of the day.  Most importantly, though, I like to have fun on the weekends not spend it doing a week’s worth of laundry.  One load each day is so manageable.  Put the load in the washer each morning, process it on to the dryer after the washer is finished OR as soon as you get home for the day.  After the drying is complete (after dinner and dishes) fold and put everything away.

Guess what, YOU’RE DONE!  If you do one load a day, each load itself is a much more manageable size and putting it all away takes no time at all.  You can even start to wind down while you finish it up.

Here are a few suggestions on how to break up your laundry to make it as simple as a load-a-day and you’re done:

• Each person has a laundry load day
• Each day wash one load with everyone’s laundry put together
• Wash a different type of laundry each day: white, colors, hand wash, towels, etc.

Laundry has always been one of my least favorite household chores.  I don’t mind gathering up everything and getting it going in the washer or even transitioning the load from the washer to the dryer.  The act of hanging up, folding, and putting away clothes was the worst kind of punishment for me.  That is pretty much where my process stopped each time.  My living room looked like a department store stock room!  When I finally realized that one load each day allowed me to not only keep up better with all the laundry but the effort of putting the laundry away was so much easier (and actually enjoyable) I knew I had found my long-sought solution.  The load-a-day approach is definitely worth trying out to see if it makes your day and week a little bit easier!

Here is another time-saving trick to help re-claim your day, meal planning!