I posted about this on Facebook last night.

Laundry. I hate laundry.

What brought this up was that new Tidying Up show on Netflix. Have you seen it yet? I started watching the first episode. I was folding laundry, and the wife of the featured family says “I just hate doing laundry, so we pay someone to do it for us.”

Say what?

That’s an option?

Also, how much does this cost, because as I sat there folding 4 baskets piled high with clothes (apparently my children wear three to four outfits a day!), I was seriously considering outsourcing the job.

This is the biggest issue I have with laundry. The care label. Everything has to be washed differently:

  • Cold, no bleach, delicate cycle, dry on low
  • Warm with like colors, hang to dry
  • Cold with like colors, tumble dry low, remove promptly, do not iron
  • Dry clean only
  • Dry clean preferred, or delicate cycle, line dry

These last 2 are the ones I hate. I don’t dry clean anything. I know we have dry cleaners in the next towns over, but there isn’t one here in town. And guess what? I’m not going to drive over there for the 1 dress that someone gifted my daughter. Nope. It’ll just keep getting worn until she spills something on it or outgrows it and I can donate it to the thrift store. Because I’m inherently lazy when it comes to laundry, and having to leave my house to have 1 item cleaned makes me insane.

So what do you look for when you buy clothes?

I look for machine wash cold, tumble dry low. I can manage that. And honestly, nothing really gets dried on low at my house. It all goes in the dryer and gets set on regular until they’re done. (Except bras and tights. They don’t go in the dryer. They hang to dry.)

This sweater is why I hate differing care label instructions. My husband was gifted this for Christmas a few years ago. Somehow, it ended up in the laundry hamper and I didn’t know it. I put 99.9% of the clothes in the hamper, so I typically just pull them out and throw them in the wash. If something has specific care instructions, I have a separate hamper for those. Like I said, I put the clothes in there, so I figure I know what’s in the hamper. Somehow, this sweater found its way into the wrong hamper, and I washed and dried it. (It’s 100% wool. Go ahead and cringe now.)

I felt super guilty it didn’t fit my husband anymore, and I’d ruined a perfectly good sweater, but I couldn’t bear to throw it out or give it away. So I held onto it and completely forgot about it until we moved. I pulled it out, and was ready to donate it when he suggested we give it to Mr M to wear to church. Guess what happened 2 weeks later? Mr M decided he’d worn it to church twice and it needed to be washed.

He didn’t tell me.

Because I put 99.9% of the laundry in the hampers (my kids make it to the doorway – I don’t know why the extra 3 steps are so hard to make), I dumped the whole hamper into the washer, and then dried the entire load.

Go ahead and cringe again. Remember, it’s 100% wool?

The photo above is how it came out. It probably fits my 7 year old. I haven’t tried it on her yet, but it looks like it’ll fit as maybe a cute crop top? Also, it’s practically bulletproof at this point, so it’s got that going for it.

Huge props to the moms and dads who sort and do 90 different loads of laundry by care tag instructions. That’s just not me. And this story is proof of that.

So I want to know: How do you laundry? Do you follow the care tags? Or do you just throw it all in and hope for the best? Let me know in the comments!

XOXO,

2 Comments on Let’s Talk Laundry!

    • I used to sort by colors, but it was soooo much laundry. Now I do colors (all of them) and whites, and a separate load of delicates (any color). I do bedding twice a month, so that’s their own load. It’s definitely cut down, but I wish I could cut it down more! 🙂

Leave a Reply to Frieda Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *