Let’s Talk Laundry: Part 2

Posted: October 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Before and After, Laundry | Tags: , | 14 Comments

You might remember that we were hit by Hurricane Irene recently. We got through the hurricane and 5 days without power/running water without any damage to the house.  (Yes, this is a laundry post. Hang on.)

About a week after that, Tropical Storm Katia came to visit. We weren’t really worried about her. It was mainly just a bunch of rain.

So the morning after the storm I went down to the basement to get something out of the dryer, and when I stepped off the last step, my foot slipped and I slid down to my back in about 2 inches of water that was covering our basement floor. It turns out that our sump pump failed in the middle of the night. So everything that was sitting on the floor of the basement was wet.

Including Mt. Laundry (I took this picture the day before the hurricane):

It’s funny what can motivate me to catch up on laundry. The thought of  a really big pile of dirty, musty, mildewy clothes was all the motivation I needed this time.

So I just cranked through it all.

I even collected all the laundry from all over the house.

From the stairs…

From the kitchen floor sweep pile…

And now we have a cleaned-up laundry area! Those white doors have not been closed in a very long time!

Take-Aways.

  • If I am able to maintain a mountain of laundry in the basement and still have clothes for everyone to wear, it probably  means we have too many clothes.
  • I need to keep up with my 1-laundry-load-a-day idea better. I said a long time ago that I was going to revise my weekly cleaning schedule. I need to actually do it and use it.

I’m linking up with OrgJunkie’s 52 Weeks of Organizing.

Let’s Talk Laundry: Part 1

Posted: September 25, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Laundry | Tags: , | 16 Comments

In high school I was one of those kids with laundry (both clean and dirty) – and everything else all over the floor of my room. I thought it was cool.

Oh yes, I did. I also thought that I knew right where everything was.

Right.

I no longer make such claims.

It did get a little better in college and in my single days, mostly because of positive peer pressure from my roommates.

In more recent years I have not done very well. Check out this before pictures from when I cleaned out my master bedroom closet:

For many years I was pretty good at washing the clothes, but then they would sit in a crumpled mess in a basket or a pile on a bed or couch. Clean, but very wrinkled. And do I seem like the ironing type to you? 

Mmmmm……no.

I finally got fed up with that nonsense and realized that I should not take the laundry out of the dryer unless I was folding it that instant! So for about a year I folded things as I took them out of the dryer. Big success!

Now I am brave enough to take them to another location and fold them right away.

One of my recent goals has been getting the folded clothes put away! I have clean, folded clothes, usually in baskets, sitting around.

Here’s what I’m working on:

  • I try to put my folded clothes on my side of the bed and Mr. RSS’s on his side, and we each put our own away. That works pretty well when I do it.
  • Ella (7) can put her clothes away – I just need to remind her.
  • Gabe (5) can’t reach his drawers very well, so I need to either keep doing it myself (and actually do it instead of leaving them in baskets), or get him a step stool, or something. The other problem is that one of his drawers is broken and if you pull it out too far, the whole drawer falls out – so we need to fix that.
  • Anna (1.5) All she wants to do is open any drawer she can get to and take everything out. Then possibly cram some things back in. Next, she likes to close the drawer on her finger. She obviously needs some work in this area! 😉
  • Cleaning out and organizing more of the closets and dressers will make this easier.

I’m also working on keeping up with Mt. Laundry, which has become a landmark in our basement…until now.  I  have some great before and after pictures to show you, but I’ll save them for later in the week. Oh the suspense!

What are your laundry successes or challenges?