Sounds like a stupid move, I know… but this has been a genius laundry hack for me at least!
Let me explain what happened after I washed a load of laundry:
- Clean laundry lands in our laundry basket in our bedroom.
- I forget to fold the laundry, or get too busy, or too tired…
- Next clean load of laundry lands on top of 1st load.
- Repeat.
At this point, I would have a laundry basket piled with clothes sitting in our bedroom for several days. We don’t have access to the nice clean clothes because they’re not in their place. We have to dig stuff like clean socks and underwear out of the laundry basket. And on top of that, I’ve just created a significantly longer folding session for myself.
You know what’s most hilarious to me now, is that I almost never used our laundry basket to carry laundry at all. It was just easier to grab things off the line and off the drying rack and carry them into the house by hand. Yeah we don’t have a dryer – that’s another story for another day. But don’t panic – we have a laundry hamper (2 in fact) for dirty laundry. They’re just not very handy for stuff like carrying. And I don’t want to stick clean laundry back in a dirty laundry hamper even if it’s empty… I mean, who does that?!
So anyway, fast forward back to the present. Lately we’ve been getting rid of a bunch of things in our house. As I was considering what else I could ditch, I thought about the laundry basket.
And that’s the moment when I realized this tool had become a crutch. My use of it had turned it into just another dumping station, I mean storage unit of course. It was enabling me to not manage housework.
So I packed that basket full with our next bunch of stuff to donate, and my husband carted it off in our next haul… NEVER TO RETURN.
Now the process looks like this:
- Clean laundry lands on our bed. (WHAT?! From bad to worse right?) Transported in a reusable shopping bag if necessary – turns out it’s hard to carry a bunch of socks by hand.
- Laundry has to be folded and put away before we go to bed. So we can sleep.
- Repeat.
Ok, so I confess that sometimes I shift the laundry to our toddler’s bed if I don’t fold it before naptime… cuz naptime cannot be delayed, folks. And sometimes I still cheat and set laundry down somewhere. But it’s much harder to get away with it sans laundry basket.
Anyway, just sharing what’s helping me. Take what helps you, leave the rest!
And don’t let your tool become a crutch.
