The Imperfect Community

[TreeMom]

I do about 6 or 7 loads a week. All on the weekends. I sort by whites/light colors, darks and reds/dark greens.

I am way lazy though.

Kelly

[Petulant Pixie]

[MainstreamMom]

WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too much! I HATE laundry!

[supergirl]

I am SUPER anal retentive about the laundry. I only do laundry on weekends, usually on Sundays, although sometimes I get a head start on Saturday. It all has to be done before Monday, though, as I don't do laundry during the week....it just gets forgotten and left in the washing machine until it smells funky and has to be rewashed or sits in the dryer until it's so wrinkled it needs to be rewashed. If I have items with stains on them that need to soak or be washed by themselves, I will do that whenever it happens, but that's it for during the week....no time, no energy.

On Friday night, I sort the laundry into piles on the floor.
- dark colors that can go in the dryer (jeans and stuff)
- dark colors that need to hang dry or dry on low (sweaters, dress clothes, etc.)
- red stuff (ANYthing that has any red in it)
- light colors that can go in the dryer (khakis and stuff)
- light colors that need to hang dry or dry on low (bras, sweaters, stuff that could shrink, etc.)
- white stuff to use bleach with and can go in the dryer (mostly boys t-shirts and socks)
- towels
- sheets
- Ethan and Connor's dark colors (use baby detergent)
- Ethan and Connor's light colors (and whites) (use baby detergent)

I let each load soak in detergent and OxiClean until the previous load is done drying. Immediately when it's done drying, it must get folded or else it gets too wrinkled. We still iron everything before we wear it, but it's easier to iron with less wrinkles.

Gosh, I have FUN weekends, huh?!?

Kristy, rest assured, I'm taking GOOD care of your maternity clothes (so you can wear them again some day).

[Scout]

Bite your tongue! I think y'all need to get on the "throw all that shit in the washer" routine. Makes life much easier, and our clothes look fine and we wear them for ages. Acyually, maybe that's why it works--everything is too old to bleed on other clothes.

[Sewingsiren]

The only sorting I do is Darks, Lights , and Filthy (plaster work clothes and/or vile undies). Since we live in a pretty mild climate I hang things out on the clothes line a lot, when I do use the dryer I just pick out what ever I think needs to air dry, I don't it is separate loads. I am guilty of leaving loads in the dryer because I forget, the dryer is sometimes referred to as the clean clothes storage unit.

[Scout]

PP, I just put Shout or whatever on the stains and then wash in cold with everything else. I do try to catch stains going into the wash, and if they look bad I will soak them first. I bought a bar of Fels naptha soap (advocated by "the queen of clean" and it works great on stains, too. The only time I wash in anything other than cold is if I do a load of all towels, because some of them have sat around damp for a while so it's nice to wash them in hot if they're the only things in there. But that really doesn't happen very often.

[TreeMom]

You know what is sad, one of the things I am most excited about when the sale of my division finally closes is that it sounds as if we will have a completely casual office. Which means less laundry for me to do!

[Petulant Pixie]

We use the Fels Naptha soap for poison ivy. We have a (seriously) 14 year-old bar of it upstairs wrapped in saran wrap in the closet. Why in God's name did we save that. What do they cost, a buck? But we have moved it from Ohio to Texas to Massachusets to here over the course of all those years. Maybe I could haul it downstairs and try it on stains

[mammaX3_MOD]

The only time I sort is if there is a "new item" in the house (new red shirt, new black jeans...) Then anything that matches that color gets thrown into a "waiting pile" until there's enough to make a full load of that color. (yes, I do sometimes persuade my kids to wear clothes of that same color to get that load washed sooner. 'Wait, don't you want to wear your fire truck pjs instead of your buzz lightyears ones'???) After being washed like that about 5 or 6 times, and the threat of it bleeding onto other clothes is gone, then it can make it's way into the "general population" of laundry. About once a month I'll gather all of the whites (socks, towels, sheets, white clothes) for "bleaching day". I also try to get my husband's thick jeans washed by themselves, but I don't specifically sort it that way. Usually there's just that much laundry waiting to be washed. I keep telling myself "if you'd just do one load a day, you won't get backed up", but life happens and I'm almost always backed up on laundry.
Dh DOES NOT HELP WITH THE LAUNDRY. He's great at other areas of the house (dishes, vacuuming, dusting, breakfast) But I do the laundry alone. In fact I'm sure Prescott must have "copy and pasted" his laundry blog directly out of my husband's mental thoughts!

[honeybee]

Dude, PP, why are you washing stained clothing in warm/hot water? No no no!!!

Clothing freak does not wash any clothes in hot water, except undies. I also do not put the kids clothes in the dryer, so if something is stained that stain does not get set and I can get it out easily. Also, not putting the clothes in the dryer keeps them from getting pilly and faded, and of course, keeps them from shrinking or becoming distorted. I will dry jammies and normal socks and some pants, but that's it! Cute socks don't go in the dryer either.

I probably do 12-14ish loads a week. I always start with the towels. The are big and bulky and take up a lot of space in the laundry basket, so getting those out of the way first makes me feel like I'm making good progress quickly. Also, they are the easiest thing to fold and put away. I wash all our sheets once a week, so the sheets I will do after the towels. Then I do generic sorting of darks, which are basicall all of dh's clothes, then lights and whites. I'm not fanatical about washing the kids clothes seperately from ours, but it's easier to deal with them when they are all together. Since I don't dry their clothes I just keep a bunch of hangers in the laundry room and shake out their clothes from the washer and hang them right up in there -- they dry pretty quickly since it is a warm room -- and then I just transfer them all straight into the closet. No folding!

[Sewingsiren]

Does anyone else hang their clothes outside to dry?

[Petulant Pixie]

[supergirl]

I use Shout too, and after you've treated the stain, you're supposed to wash it in hot/warm water. Cold water doesn't always get the stain out. The stain will set if you dry the stained item in the dryer, but even then, I can usually get the Shout to work later....just have to use A LOT of it and scrub really hard, maybe even use some OxiClean too. I use the Shout spray. We buy the giant container (over a gallon) from Sam's Club and just refill the spray bottle when necessary. We use far too much of it to use the gel, but the spray seems to work fine for us.

[becky2005]