Thanks to my seventh grade FCS (Family and Consumer Sciences a.k.a. Home Economics) teacher (Mrs. Basstress) I have been doing my own laundry since the fateful assignment where we had to have our parents teach us how.
While I lived at home, and in the dorms at Penn State, laundry day was ALWAYS on Sunday. It made sense because we had the most time on those days. You were always back from traveling, and it gave you a fresh start to the week.
This habit of doing laundry on Sunday's stayed with me for a few years after college. In the first apartment my husband and I lived in, we did not have laundry machines in our apartment unit. They were in the building, but you had to carry the loads downstairs, pay by the load, and remember to go and rescue your clothes before someone came and snatched them. Because we were living in a complex that was primarily college students, I found that Sunday mornings were the best time to do laundry because no one else was awake yet.
After we moved when my husband graduated graduate school, we finally had our very own washer and dryer IN the apartment. I was over the moon (what an adult thing to be excited about). And the habit of laundry Sunday's remained. It actually stayed intact for a full five years after college, until I decided to change my habit this past summer.
We have moved (again) back to Pennsylvania and with the move my husband acquired a new work schedule that has him working late two nights per week. I decided that rather than "waste" the time that he was at work, I would try and be productive. And thus began a new laundry habit. When I would do laundry on Sundays I would do ALL the laundry on Sundays. This took HOURS because between my husband and I we typically had four loads of clothing, plus towels and/or sheets depending on the week.
When I first began my multi-day laundry system I would wash all of the clothes that were dirty on the days that I did laundry. It seemed easiest to just combine our piles together and wash them all at the same time. This worked for a while, until I started back to work in the fall, and then I had to start remembering which outfits I had worn as to not duplicate them within the same week (because unfortunately this is something that teenagers would notice).
I was beginning to become frustrated with this system, but with the low quality washer/dryer that we currently have, it was too much to do all of the laundry on one of Eric's long days. And thus resulted my current system, which for the past two months has been working quite nicely.
The first late night Eric works in the week I do my laundry. I produce two loads of clothing (we have a very small washer and a crappy dryer so they can't be huge loads) each week. Total these two loads take about four hours from start to finish. Eric produces a similar amount of clothing each week and so on his second late night, I do his laundry, again taking about four hours.
Not to worry, Sundays are still reserved for washing towels and sheets as needed, but by moving my laundry day(s) into the week, I have more time on the weekend to do things that I enjoy.
What is your families laundry schedule like? Have you ever tried something that failed miserably?
Until our next adventure (House Hunting!!)
~C
