I’m so very sorry it has taken me so long to return to this. I’m sure the delay has done nothing to quell the rumors that there is indeed no solution to the laundry problem or the rumors that I’ve simply gone off the deep end. But, neither of those is true. Well. The first one is definitely not true. I’ve put this whole silly endeavor on hold this week as we’ve had a family crisis. The crisis will be described in tomorrow’s blog. Or the next day. No joke, it’s been a crisis, but we’re all OK. I’ll leave you with that, so you’ll have to come back tomorrow. And the next day.
Meanwhile, let’s finish this silliness. I’ll start by reminding you where we left off. I’ll set the scene.
So there I was: entrenched between and amongst piles and piles of mostly cotton with a few blends tossed in to keep it edgy. Piles on the floor, piles in the hall, piles in every bedroom we have, and a pile in our foyer by our steps.
So here’s what we did.
First. A system. While my husband and I both battled the laundry, I was the one who devised the final, successful battle plan. First things first: that pile in the foyer had to go! It was a two-pronged plan. Number one: the pile of kids’ clothes.
The solution here was simple: no more getting dressed or undressed downstairs. Everyone must get dressed upstairs. Where the bedrooms are. Where the clothes are. Seriously, two professional degrees, forty years of school between us, and it takes 2 1/2 years to figure this out. Wow. So, the system says, there should be no more clothing in the foyer.
But what about the wet smelly stuff? Now that it no longer had the pile of dry clothes to buffer it, the wet stuff was leaving wet marks on my tired hardwood floors. That was no good. So I bought a plastic basket at Big-Letter-Multi-Purpose-Cheap-But-Still-Maintains-a-Smattering-of-Moral-Fortitude-in-Its-Business- Practices-and-You-Know-This-Cuz-It’s-Teetering-on-Financial-Ruin Store. I keep the basket in the foyer, but in a more discreet location, and we collect our well-wrung dish cloths there, keeping the floor dry, but being realistic about the fact that I am not about to run upstairs every time I finish with a dish cloth. Initially the plan was to empty the basket throughout the day, or at least once a day, upstairs by the washer and dryer, but I found that just doesn’t happen. And I’m not real excited about throwing wet stuff into a basket of dry (dirty) laundry anyway. So now we simply collect the dish cloths in the basket until we run out of clean ones. Then I take them upstairs and wash them.
This naturally takes me to the next part of the system, which is really the key to the system. The critical tactic. Insofar as it is possible: Keep the laundry as separate going into the washer as it needs to be when it is put away. 95% of my sorting is now done before the clothes and stuff go into the washer. The reason for this is two-fold. First, I simply do not have time to sort laundry and wash and dry laundry. I don’t. I have teeny tiny windows of opportunity for dealing with the stuff, so I need to grab-and-go. Not unlike our seminary days of laundry, but now if everything is sorted when I get to it, I can grab judiciously. This way the clean clothes we end up with are ones we actually need and wear.
Which brings me to the second point of this sort-first program. I sort by person. Everyone has his or her own laundry hamper. And then there’s a basket for whites/sheets/towels. That way, for all but one load per week, everything you pull out of the dryer is going to same place. That has proven to be the keystone in our little operation.
To accomplish this goal, I started by purchasing for both Isaac and Hannah (this was before Ruth came along and added her mess) a simple, plastic, lidded trash can like this:
I went to the Bedroom, Bathroom, and More-Stuff-Than-You-Could-Ever-Imagine- You’d-Want-for-Your-Home store looking for hampers for everyone but discovered that these trash cans were far cheaper than any hamper I could find. It wasn’t until much later that I discovered the added, unforeseeable bonus feature that would have made the thing worth the price of the pricey hampers. The dome-shaped lid has a dual purpose. Attached to the can, it simply hides the dirty clothes. But. Once removed, it now serves nicely as an astronaut helmet. Who knew? Ours have each successfully completed several space expeditions.
When Ruth came along and Isaac and Hannah moved upstairs to the attic, sharing that room, I changed over to this three-bin hamper thingie (except ours is all white):
Bought it at the same store I bought the wet-dish-towel basket. Or maybe it was that French-sounding store with the bull’s-eye trademark. Not sure. Anyway, works great, because you can easily see where everyone stands on the laundry front and I keep it all right near the washer and dryer.
So, Hannah and Isaac and Ruth each had their own hamper. Ry and I each had our own dirty laundry receptacles. We had a basket by the washer for holding dirty towels, sheets, and “whites” (aka, “unmentionables”). Phase One of Operation Defeat the Laundry was complete.
Well. Almost complete. The plan was in place. And I knew it was going to work. The trick was getting everyone on board with it.
Tomorrow: a harsh talking-to and child labor. (Who knew it was possible to drag out a story about laundry for six days and 3,000 words?)
