Death by Laundry

Laundry, the bane of my existence, my arch-nemesis, but totally a non-fiction story of my life. It is the one constant in my life because I am unable to buy an outfit for everyday of the rest of our lives for the entire family.

Growing up, it was just me and my Mom. I have no memory of laundry being such an atrocious task. Then I moved out...

When Paul and I lived out in Chicago our first apartment didn't have a laundry room in the unit and their laundry room for the entire complex was suspect. Our only decent option was to take our laundry to the laundrymat. Nice because all of the laundry was done at once but stressful since all the laundrymats were always spanish speaking (getting some Bounce was not easy and I never understood what the TV shows were saying).

In our first house, our washer and dryer were literally right in the hall by our bedroom. It didn't matter. I would wash clothes and immediately forget that I washed them. I'm a "show me something shiny and I'm easily distracted"  kinda girl. When I would realize that I forgot to put the clothes in the dryer (usually when I needed to wash more clothes), I would have to re-wash the forgotten load. Once I finally made it to actually getting the clothes dry, then came the folding. WORST. THING. EVER! Personally, I hate touching hot clothes out of the dryer. Once folded, they would be put away.

We bought a new house when I was pregnant with Ashleigh and the dryer was in the basement. Not an ideal set up for someone that has the out of sight, out of mind attitude. At this point, once finally washed and folded, clothes would just remain in the basket. We always had at least one basket of clothes in our bedroom. I would usually put Ashleigh's away but for some reason I didn't always put ours away. I could still do laundry about once a week, even with the new addition.

After Cooper was born, we bought a new house. Again the washer and dryer were downstairs...in the garage actually. Then Addison was born. Laundry was insane. I worked full time out of the house and laundry was always backed up. Pulling into the garage everyday was an awesome reminder since you could see the piles of clothes on the laundry table. Ugh...at this point, if the clothes got washed, they ended up in a basket. Period. No folding. No putting away. I would say laundry would get folded about once a month and put away quarterly.

We have since moved to NC and added another addition to our family. Our laundry is located in our second floor hallway, right outside the bedrooms. I am so thankful that most NC homes do not have basements ( I hate going all the way down to the basement to wash clothes). Even though the washer and dryer are in the most convienent location possible, I still have a ton of laundry. There are 6 of us and the kids change clothes at least twice a day. At one time, I did one load of laundry a week. Now I do one load of just bedding a week. I have to wash at least 2 loads of laundry (1 whites, 1 darks) a day to maintain and just when the basket is empty, somehow something becomes dirty and gets thrown into it. Folding is still a challenge and there are many times where we get dressed out of baskets full of clothes. I have been trying super hard to get into the habit of folding while taking out of the dryer, but sometimes it's just not possible. You might ask why I don't have the kids or Paul fold clothes. Well, they probably get less wrinkled by remaining in the basket than if they were to "help" fold them.

You also might be asking yourself "what about ironing?'. Yeah, that doesn't happen to often to really comment about it. Paul irons his clothes for work and if I need something ironed, I toss it in the dryer to get the wrinkles out. Not sure if it is a southern thing or not, but Paul is always talking about how the guys he works with all have wives that iron their clothes for them. Umm, yeah, he's lucky he has clean underwear at this point.

So, short of hiring someone to just come in and fold/put away our laundry, do you have any sure fire ways of doing laundry? Or do you just really enjoy it? If it's the latter, we are destined to not be friends. Then again maybe you want to come to my house and do my laundry for free ;)