Loads of Fun!
The idea of a simplified life touches my soul. I crave it! In some areas, I do it really well. In others, I am a work in progress. And then, there are areas of total simplification failure!
Allow me to pass on the single most impactful gem of all!
My biggest win in the simplification process has to do with laundry. When I had only 2 children, I read a book about simplification (I don’t remember what it was called, but it was small!) One chapter talked about washing all socks in the same load, which is a fine idea. But this got me thinking. Socks are actually tedious to sort and pair, especially socks for tiny feet! I kept mulling this idea around and then realized that socks were not my problem, it was all the tiny clothes. Especially with 2 girls. People think it is adorable to give matching outfits… it is… until it is time to wash them and then try to figure out which one is a 3T and which one is for 18mo. The tiny tags curl up like a scroll in the wash, so, I would either need to lay out the outfits on top of one another to determine which was bigger or I had to unroll that tiny scroll and try to read the faded size before it snapped back into a scroll!
When my third daughter arrived, this sorting of tiny identical girls’ clothes became a puzzle that I needed to solve for my time and sanity.
Good Lookin’ was a basketball coach and when the players are on the road, each has a laundry bag with their initials on it. They put their dirty uniform and socks in the bag, which the coaches then would take to a laundromat, throw the bags (NOT just the clothes) into the machine and then into the dryer and then return to the player! Genius! If that was good enough for Division 1 athletes, that was good enough for me. And so, I gave each girl a different colored laundry bag and trained them to put all their own clothes in their bag. When the bag was full, I threw the bag in the wash and then in the dryer and then finally opened the bag to fold and put back into their drawers! Amazing! I never had to sort matching outfits or try to figure out which socks belonged to whom and rarely have we ever even lost a sock!
As the girls grew… they each began to add their own technique to this washing process. Eventually, they outgrew the laundry bag (because it could not hold a week’s worth of clothes). One daughter continued to put her socks in the bag and she would dump the clean, dry socks into a bin in her room and wear them all mismatched. Another, refused to ever turn her clothes right side out. I usually help fold their clothes, but I would get so frustrated having to turn every item out the other way. She told me, “Mom, I don’t mind them inside out, just fold them that way!” So, with Abercrombie’s clothes, they get washed inside out and folded inside out. She rights them before she wears them!
Some of you are probably twitching a little at the thought of not sorting clothes at all. Here is what I have discovered… the dyes and fabrics today, don’t bleed! It is truly amazing! There is one exception. Denim. If you wash white shirts or socks with a new pair of denim jeans, the socks will become a dingy white. My kids don’t actually care! I do, so with my own, I wash new jeans separately for several washes before I revert back to my no sort method.
I have saved countless hours by not sorting clothes before washing them and by not having to sort clothes and socks after washing them!
We all have our own laundry baskets. We each throw the entire load in the wash, it is moved to the dryer, then it is folded and put back in the laundry basket for that person to put away! Truly, it is amazing! You really must try it! I have been doing this now for 18 years. It allows me more time to play with my kids, to bake, to read and to go for walks. Laundry has never since been an awful task to dread. As my kids got big enough to do their own laundry, they learned quickly the process and have all been able to easily manage it and move someone else’s load along in the process.
They also have each added easier steps to their own method. All of my children have bins for specific items that they personally don’t deem necessary to even fold… like socks (some sort and pair them and some dump them all unmatched in the bin), underwear (again, it is a preference and some of my kids neatly fold their underwear while others simply drop the clean underwear in a bin, since no one can tell if it is wrinkled!), running shorts (these are tiny pants and really hard to keep folded, so a couple of my kids have decided a bin is a better method, plus they don’t show wrinkles anyway!), basketball shorts and practice jerseys (these are made of slippery fabrics and don’t stay neatly folded or show wrinkles – hooray for another bin!)
And, to take this all one step further, Good Lookin’ has only one type of sock. So, all of his socks match all of the other socks. No sorting is ever necessary!
May your life filled with laundry be a bit simpler and may other areas become more full! Here is spending less time doing laundry and spending more time having Loads of Fun!