Don’t get overwhelmed with your laundry mountain. I’ve been there and half the battle is in the mind, dealing with discouragement. I’ll guide you in how to tackle this. It’s a matter of habits. Taking care of the laundry mountain is attainable.
First of all, plan a day of the week for laundry catch-up.
On that day, your goal is to get every stitch of dirty laundry sorted, washed, dried, folded, and put away. Bonus points for washing the bedding!
Second, establish a daily laundry goal.
This is completely dependent on your family’s lifestyle. Do you have preschoolers and a baby? Kids who play sports? Live on a farm with manure-caked clothes? Have a husband who wears business professional?
Several years ago, my laundry situation caused me to have the daily goal of four loads by noon and my whole crew folded laundry during our Afternoon Chore Time. Then life changed and I had the daily goal of four loads by four. Now, I have just a handful of older kids at home who prefer to do their own laundry.
You look at your life and how often you need to do laundry in your unique life. Maybe your life allows you to do all the laundry at once on one day, maybe it’s better for you to start one laundry load every morning and switch loads in the afternoon. The idea is to make a plan that suits your life and then stick to your plan.
Thirdly, check your laundry attitude.
I really don’t enjoy the laundry task. I’d rather wash dishes. Laundry is one of those things that I have to fight a stinky attitude in myself. So believe me when I tell you that I’m preaching to myself.
(The following exercise works for anything in life that we don’t like to do but have to do anyway.)
Acknowledge what you don’t like about doing laundry. Write down your reasons for laundry dislike.
Is there anything that you can do about your reasons for dislike? Are your problems figure-out-able? Moving our laundry up out of the basement to a room with a sunny window made a huge difference in my laundry attitude.
Next, write down all the benefits of clean laundry and what happens when you and your family do not have the appropriate clothes clean. We don’t want to live in that place.
Now, go back to the first two steps and create a laundry system that works for you. Make it a daily and weekly routine and then laundry becomes an automatic habit. When something in life becomes an automatic habit, it ceases to cause angst. Let that soak in for a minute and then put forth the effort to make new laundry habits. The mountain will go away, I promise.
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