Five Reasons for Laundry Day and Simple Steps to Get Started

What does your laundry situation look like?  Right now, I have partially full baskets in the bathrooms and the laundry room.  It’s not my assigned laundry day so anything I might do today will be fit in around the edges of life.  On my Laundry Day though, I commit to completing all of the loads. Wash, Dry, Fold, and Put Away. If your laundry situation has you struggling, here are five reasons why you need to have a Laundry Day in your week and simple steps to start holding a Laundry Day.  

Assigning a day of the week to focus on laundry is an essential step to keeping it under control. I’ve written extensively on Laundry Day in Home Management, Plain and Simple.  You can get more nitty gritty details, tips and tricks there.

Five Reasons for Laundry Day

1. Stress Management: Laundry can be a stressor when it piles up and takes over the laundry room, bathrooms, and bedrooms.  Laundry Day is a commitment every week that keeps it from getting out of control.
2. Sense of Accomplishment: OK, the laundry is never ever completely 100% finished BUT when everything in the house is clean except the clothes on your backs, it’s a satisfying feeling.
3. Clean and Fresh: You and your family are not pulling questionable smelling clothes off the floor to wear, so you all smell nice.  The laundry room smells nice when it is not full of dirty clothes. The bathrooms and bedrooms smell better without piles of dirty clothes.  You can walk into a bathroom or bedroom without stepping on dirty clothes and towels. Bonus: you get to sleep in clean sheets!
4. Your people have clothes to wear: No more questions like: “Where is my ___?” “I have no _____.” “I need _____.”
5. Clean sheets and towels: These are items that can slip by the everyday laundry due to “tyranny of the urgent” laundry.  It is so nice to slip into clean sheets at night and have a fresh smelling towel after a shower.

Simple Steps to Start a Laundry Day Weekly Routine

• Identify the best day of the week to hold Laundry Day.  The best day is one that you are home for most of the day.
• Plan ahead and decide on an order for the loads.  Some things take longer to dry, do you want to wash the jeans and towels in the morning or afternoon?  Wash the sheets as soon as people get out of bed so that you can put them back on the beds before nap time.
• Get an early start.  Put the first load in the washer right after you start the coffee pot.
• Make it a goal to have everything folded and put away by a certain time.
• Get your family involved.  They can collect, sort, switch loads, fold and put away too.  Hint: listen to audio books while folding.
• While you’re in the laundry room, do a small task to clean the room. Dust, wash the window, clean the sink, organize your cupboards, add needed items to your shopping list.

You can do it!  It’s just a matter of creating a weekly routine,  committing one day to doing as much laundry as you can from start to finish.  It won’t go perfectly, there will be good days and frustrating days, but you will make progress.  To make it more enjoyable: make yourself a special drink or treat that you only have on Laundry Day. Make a fun and upbeat playlist for Laundry Day, and write a list of things you are grateful for—maybe put it on a chalkboard in your laundry room and change it each week?  Each day is a gift, our families are gifts, the laundry and the equipment are gifts; learn to celebrate all of it!

Grab a handy checklist of the Simple Steps in the Free Resource Library.