#i always felt behind on laundry and Not Good Enough and w/e and this method has made such a huge difference

[larkthorne]

[Image ID: the cover of a book: Laundry Love: Finding Joy In A Common Chore by Patric Richardson with Karin B. Miller. The title is in rainbow letters on a yellow background with a stylized drawing of a front load washing machine with a heart on the door in the middle of the cover. /End ID]

Hello to all of you with laundry on chairs, etc, whose executives also fail to function, hope you're well, etc.

Just want to recommend this book to anyone who dislikes laundry or can't keep on top of it! I listened to the audiobook a couple months ago and it has changed the way I do laundry. Here's a TL;DR summary but if you can get this book from your library or whatever it's a charming, easy, quick read.

The basic gist of this life-changing laundry method is, you look at your week. You pick a day that works. That's laundry day babey. Six days a week, don't worry about it. On laundry day, do something. (Caveat: my laundry day is nominally Wednesday but well. It does shift around! For my two person household, as long as I don't go longer than 10 days between Laundry Day we're fine. Your mileage may vary.) Laundry!

Laundry Day, per the method in Laundry Love, is a celebration. One puts on a fun playlist. One watches a trashy romcom while folding. One has a disco ball in one's laundry room, etc. Laundry Day is for enacting care on the things that go on your body everyday.

(I've not quite got that far, but I do try to make it pleasant. I like an audiobook or a podcast.)

The method has you split your clothes into lights, darks, warm colors, and cool colors. I don't think this is like, totally necessary - I like to do it, but if it was a very low spoons day, just sort of making two to four mid-size piles regardless of color would be fine. It is handy to have more smaller piles rather than one or two big ones, in my experience - more on that later.

Before you wash each load, ideally you pretreat stains (the book goes into detail, i mostly just scrub soap onto stains with a toothbrush which mostly works).

(There are also ways you can process silky fabric and wool fabric to allow it to go in the machine instead of dry cleaning or just chucking it in and hoping for the best! Basically: laundry net bags. Silky things in them. Roll up wool sweaters or w/e tightly, then put in the net bag, and pin down the excess. But also, if you don't have silky or wool things, like. Don't worry about it.)

Each load of laundry is washed on warm, on the quick cycle, with extra/high spin. Use like. A tablespoon of eco-friendly clothing detergent. I use a tablespoon of washing soda in the detergent drawer of my front loader and 2 tablespoons of castile soap in the drum of the washer, because Nancy Birtwhistle from Great British Bake-Off told me to, and it's very cheap per load and very effective. But it is better to use eco friendly stuff where you can because it leads to less irritants and pollutants and, this is key, less buildup on your clothes. And use less -- a tablespoon is plenty.

The short cycle on warm is enough to get your clothes clean! Without letting them get too beat up for longer than they need. The extra spin gets them dryer so they take less time to dry.

It is ideal to dry things by hanging them on a line or whatever! That's the platonic ideal of laundry. Clothes last longer and smell nice if you dry them outside. But I've had a Month Or Two and I've been using the dryer. It does wear your clothes out faster and uses up not-strictly-necessary energy but you gotta make it out of the laundry chair cycle somehow so do what you gotta do.

The good thing about the three or four small-to-mid piles of laundry is, as they come out of the dryer, you can fold it and put it away promptly, and it can feel far less overwhelming than looking at Mount Laundry.

Rotate through the piles you made earlier - quick cycle in the wash, dry them somehow, put them away. Only one day a week! The book suggests this takes 3-4 hours. I get tired if I try to do it all at once so I tend to let it take all day, taking breaks as necessary, but it's like, my only chore to do that day. (I still sometimes leave the last load of laundry in the dryer...)

The book offers tips for if you use a laundromat too! I don't, so can't speak to that. I think, though, having the same mindset: one day a week (ish) everything gets done. Some weeks that's aspirational, but there's always another go.

But, crucially: if it's not Laundry Day, simply do not worry about laundry. Put it in a hamper and that's that.

It's not perfect and it won't work for everyone I'm sure, but I learned a lot from the book (despite having a background in costuming and being a hobby sewist - I know about taking care of fabric! And I learned a lot). I really enjoy assigning a day to be For Laundry, and just allowing it to fall off the radar the other days. I always know another Laundry Day is coming.

Anyway! That's me done being bossy on the internet today. Happy laundry!