I despise laundry. How can I make my life contain less of it?
The part I despise the most is putting them in the closet. I've tried many solutions, but I've not found any that made the job less tedious.
When I was a student, I just threw my clothes into various shelves based on the type and considered that good enough. I did not fold clothes ever. I just threw the boxers in one shelf, the socks in another, T-shirts in another, pants in another.
As an adult with a family, this won't be accepted anymore.
I had a period in which I had a dryer, but I did not find that it saved me a lot of time because the fastest way to get the laundry into the shelves and the hangers is by sorting it first. And if I had to sort it anyways, I could just sort it on the drying rack and put it on the hangers on the drying rack.
I think it's fairly hard to find solutions to fix this.
I have considered mapping out each step, and then try to identify the pain points. Then find ways to remove as much friction as possible. Kind of like how an UX designer would handle this.
107 replies
This right here is the real problem. Can you explain what''s unacceptable about it and why you're not asking, "How do I convince my spouse to accept this?"
That probably isn't even necessary. If OP doesn't mind doing dishes, they can share responsibilities. OP does dishes and puts them away, spouse does laundry and puts clothes away. Everything is now clean and tidy and nobody HAS to do the thing they hate.
Nakedness. Ideally find a work from home situation. Careful answering the door.
Converting my family into nudists does not seem to be the right solution here.
However, the idea of trying to reduce the amount of clothes that are worn daily might be on the right track.
Start with pants. You can wear one pair of bluejeans for a week.
…. Only a week?
My partner's dad had a pair that stood on their own. Not frozen, just gross. Gotta admire the dedication I guess.
Are these people regularly shitting themselves while wearing jeans? Doing yard work in jeans?
Why are they being washed every week - are they heavily soiled?
Shit, even my pair I do construction work in, I only wash when they get too soiled.
My off work pair I wash like once every 8 months.
Pretty sure a lot of jeans just tell you to wash once every 6 months unless you really soil them, or just use a brush to remove debris and throw in a ziplock in the freezer if they smell.
A week? Rookie numbers
Start with pants? Then what, work up to undies?
You’re supposed to wear raw jeans for at least half a year before ever washing them.
The heck? I do have like ten pair of jeans and don't wash them unless I get something on them, but still end up washing a pair of jeans every second week at least. Always manage to get them dirty in some way.
My husband used to not wash his much but got a rash on his thighs & the doctor said to wash them more often. Not like every time you wear them, but not just twice a year.
I don't know about six months, but you're really not supposed to wash denim frequently at all.
I've seen some people go as far as to suggest putting them in the freezer as a way to kill germs instead of washer and dryer, as it's less damaging to the material.
I dunno about all that though.
If you gotta do it, you could consider matching socks / underwear / undershirts. Then pants and shirts can be worn multiple times to cut back?
I advocate getting your family to do the laundry and put it away instead and you can do something someone else doesn't like: cooking, or dishes, or lawn and garden care or something.
My grandpa wore coveralls, he had a rack of identical coveralls and I can't remember him ever wearing anything else.
My parents were always naked at home. Like, always. And it was that way pretty much until I grew up.
This is called a Haberdasher Stand. When you undress you hang you clothes on it. Wear the same clothes as many days in a row as you can. Much less laundry per week.
I bet you smell bad
This is not an acceptable response from Poem_for_your_sprog. Do better.
nice try fbi
Where did OP say they don't shower? Unless they have a particularly stinky job, clothes don't need to be washed after a single wear.
if wearing the same thing 3 days in a row makes you stink, you should probably talk to a doctor.
I mean, it depends greatly on what you're doing in those clothes
Oh yeah let me do a 45 minute workout in a T-shirt and then wear it to work the next 3 days in a hot factory.
I used to dislike laundry in the past, until I figured out that the part that I disliked was the monotony and lack of mental stimulation. This could be solved by listening to podcasts or audiobooks while doing the laundry. Now I no longer dislike it, because it's really only an opportunity to listen to podcasts for 30-40 minutes (hang-drying/folding time)
podcasts ftw for any house chores
I love music, and spend hours listening to tunes with my ridiculously expensive IEMs while working but for some reason it doesn't cut the mustard with house admin
Become a nudist.
I'm a nudist and this is actually legit. I only wear clothes to go outside sometimes and often only briefly so I'll usually just hang them back up when I'm done. I only do a single small load of laundry once a month or so. My wife isn't so she has to do like 4 loads a month of her clothes.
How do you deal with body soil on furniture?
Sheets on the couch, covers on chairs.
Soooo how often do you wash those sheets that are the equivalent of your underwear?
Once a month or so. But I'm the only person that sits in that spot naked so take that how you will. You're gonna gross yourself out from your own worldview no matter what I say.
Edit: Didn't your momma tell you that nekiid bodies are disgusting?
This is maybe tmi, but female bodies produce secretions down there even while not on their period. It's called cervical mucous and is most notable once a month (a week or two after your period ends), but can sometimes occur at other times. I understand that you are male. But as someone with female parts, I just wonder if it would be embarrassing standing up and there is a stain on the sheets on the couch.
That's a very good point!
This is actually so interesting lol. It raises so many questions for me. Like, did your current wife know you were a nudist before marrying you? How did she take it when she found out? Something you had to break to her or did you know she'd be fine with it? She doesn't think it's annoying to accommodate you nudism in her home? Like, people coming over unannounced is harder etc? Stuff on the furniture and so on?
Please answer any, all, or none, however you see fit. 😁
Yeah she knew the whole time. It's never a problem at all. We have separate rooms and I can always just throw a sarong on it need be. I'm not sure why you would assume there would be problems. There aren't any.
Well, I'm not assuming there are, just wondering if there are. 🙂 Anyway, that's great for you.
The separate rooms thing, is that something you both want because of the nudism?
No, it has nothing to do with it. We just both prefer having our own bedrooms. Nudism is completely not an issue for me.
Interesting. I could never imagine wanting a separate room to my wife. To each their own. 😊
Yep, that's totally valid. We are both people who don't like physical contact all the time so sharing a bed is not great for us. We do enjoy it from time to time and sleep together (especially while camping).
Says who? Like if it's your clothes your room your life, do it your way.
Signed. A couple who hasn't folded clothes in months
Become a nudist.
No clothes = no laundry.
become a nudist
There are nudist reserves you can move to, to live forever. While most of them go out to earn. I know of a person that runs a restaurant/food corner in nudist reserve and leaves the reserve like once a month. He was my favorite colleague when he was still living with us normies. Now I see him like once every two years.bHe even got married to lady who also lived in nudist reserve,
I never asked, but I doubt he does laundry. Let me text him. Will edit to say what he replies.
Edit: He replied right away, his kind neighbor has been doing his laundry last six years. He doesn't even own a washing machine. It makes sense, his neighbors both work outside the reserve, they do laundry every 2-3 days, they don't mind taking on two additional clothes every month.
P.S. He said two, Motherfucker has been going commando every time we met, hasn't he? Curse you for making me learn this knowledge.
Live out of a laundry basket. If anyone questions it just curl yourself around the laundry basic and scream like a possum protecting its nest of young. Maintain solid eye contact throughout. Defecate if necessary.
They’ll never mention it again and probably warn others. you can then live out of that laundry basket free of judgement.
Follow me for more info about living life with the freedom of a possum .
Lower your standards. Half-ass fold things. Don't use hangers. I drape over the drying rack and have gotten pretty adept at a quick lift and couple of shitty folds into a stack. Another tip is to have clothing that don't care about wrinkles (synthetics, sports clothing). Then you can just throw them into a drawer. I have pretty homogeneous clothing (all the same featureless t-shirt in black, white, grey, same underwear, etc). This helps with the organizing on to the drying rack. I know exactly how many of each goes where and it is trivial to color coordinate so the half ass folding naturally collates the stacks.
I wait to do laundry every couple of weeks. It all fits in one load most of the time (bought largest high efficiency machine, 12kg capacity). Some clothing gets more than one use before washing, and it entirely depends on how active I am in that clothing.
All of this helps me personally mitigate my extreme disdain at the task. Oh, and getting absolutely stoned out of my mind. Put on some tunes, it ain't so bad either the draping (largest things first), or the shitty folding.
This is the total opposite of what you should do. Letting it pile up and doing it sloppily is like pulling off the bandaid as slowly and painfully as possible.
I do all menual labour tasks like that while listening to podcasts, makes it far less annoying.
Single type of socks so you don't need to pair them.
Dry shirts/t-shirts etc on hangers, then just hang up the hangers. You can extend this to trousers etc if you have the hanging space.
I didn't even realize what a life hack this actually is despite having been doing it for like 15 years.
People keep gifting me fancy sports socks... They just go in the misc socks draw and don't get used 😭
nah anatomical L/R socks are god tier, they are my sensory delight and demand
Maybe consider not washing things so often? Underwear, socks and t shirt I wear one day, but an outer shirt I might wear twice, pants or shorts for a week, towels last one to two weeks.
Some fabrics, like denim aren’t even meant to be routinely laundered. Lots of fabrics hold up well to fewer washes or more wears between washings, as long as it’s not stinky or obviously dirty there’s no actual reason to wash something.
This is what I used to do.. then we had a kid 😭
it gets better. kids now upper single/lower double digits, and I can reuse stuff for dayzz where it was previously multiple changes per day
bonus trauma memory: just about to go to work, no wait I need a new shirt, tie and jacket
now I'm late ¯\(ツ)/¯
Invest in merinos and wool / hemp / tencel-lyocell clothing . They retain less odor, evacuate sweat better, plus, more adapted to heat/cold regulations. Even wool can be cool in summer. Avoid cotton first layer like t-shirts, you almost need to wash them after one use. They tend to smell quickly. A merinos shirt can be used Monday, be hanged Tuesday, used Wednesday and so on. Invest in a good pair on denim jeans if wear this kind of pants and remember that it doesn't need to be washed unless it's stained or smell bad. Denim should just be hanged on reverse side outside from time to time to take fresh air. Use merinos socks too. Work the same as tshirt. You will still need to wash, but less often.
The cons are merinos and other wool need to be hand washed at best (there wool program on machine, but I don't risk it). And merinos is more fragile than cotton or synthetic fabric.
And if you don't like folding, use hangers. That how I do.
Alpaca > Merino. Better temperature regulation and softer feel.
Check out Paka. They have fully traceable alpaca gear, also in tencel/merino blends.
Tanks for the recommendations, never had the chance to try alpaca. I'll check Paka.
Also, I forgot to mention linen for summer.
Produce less dirty laundry. Depending on what you do for a living, and the climate, some clothes can be worn more than once. The main ones that come to mind are pants, but your discretion on other items. Just don't be gross and stinky
I genuinely love laundry so I'm not sure I'm the best person to comment but here are a few suggestions:
as others have said, get a set of drawers so that you can just chuck different clothing items in different drawers. If there's no space for that you could get some storage containers/baskets for smaller items in your closet.
Try rolling up your clothes rather than folding them. This is often recommended for packing but I always do it. It saves space and you can roll a bunch of clothes quickly and they're easy to move from where you're folding to the wardrobe. This image gives a rough idea, but you can find tonnes of videos as well:
You can probably get away with socks and underwear just being tossed in a drawer. I actually find button-up shirts easier to deal with than t-shirts because hanging is easier than folding.
You can hang t-shirts too though
Yeah, but it's more of a pain, and I don't have enough closet space for all my t-shirts in addition to pants and button-ups
If there’s a system that works for you and isn’t impacting others why not do it? My entire family basically lives out of laundry baskets and chaos drawers. We don’t fold our clothes. If something gets a little wrinkled we toss it in the dryer for a second before we wear it.
I don’t know, I just think for me at least, as someone with Audhd I grew up being told there were “rules” to keeping a clean house like only run the dishwasher full, or sort your laundry by color… but they are sort of old dumb rules.
A full dishwasher means I’m literally out of dishes for my small family, laundry can be washed on cold and be fine for most things, just find systems you can live with and follow… screw the rules.
Running a half full dishwasher is more efficient on water than washing a single pan by hand. The old rules are dumb
The old rules were in place because old stuff wasn't as efficient. It used to be less resource heavy to fill a single sink and wash all your dishes with that.
Even not running a full dishwasher we’re still only running it once a week, if not longer. We tend to reuse dishes if they can be i.e. made popcorn twice this week and just keep using the same bowl cause why not.
I have a dryer. All clothes go in the dryer because outside is wet and inside is tiny. If clothes don’t like the dryer, they shrink and we can’t wear them, therefore all clothes are dryer-safe. After dryer, clothes are piled on couch. When clean clothes are needed, they’re on the couch.
I often put on a podcast while folding laundry to entertain myself...
why won't it be accepted any more? Does your family care more about the state of your closet than you being happy?
Seriously, talk to them about it, tell them how you feel.
Find a partner who doesn't mind doing laundry.
I wear the same clothes two days in a row, sometimes three. This alone cuts laundry in half, or by a third.
When I take off my clothes I don't bunch them up or turn them inside-out, so they come out of the dryer ready to hang with minimal fuss.
All of my socks are the same, black Dickies, so I don't need to match them.
I hang everything, because I hate folding. Also, when it's folded, it's stacked somewhere, and you need to dig through the stack to find anything. Socks and underwear go in a bin.
That's too much effort for me. If it's clean it goes into the clean pile inside the closet. It's kinda fun hunting for correct piece of clothing in the morning. Matching socks is a bonus.
Dresser. Little boxes called drawers that hide your lack of folding. They’re great for things like underwear items.
Of course, you’ll look like like child or homeless person walking around in crap that’s wrinkled to that degree. Depending on your job, you may get pulled aside for a talk regarding your appearance.
The dresser will remove roughly half this onerous task for you, reducing clothes on hangers in a closet, but you’ll likely still need clothing that doesn’t look like it came from the dirty floor pile.
The definition of adulting is accepting a list of tasks you never really want to do. Until you’ve done that, you haven’t really grown up all the way yet.
I have a big cedar chest in my closet I just throw all my clothes in when I don't feel like sorting.
i have a touch of the autism and i can tell you what has made a huge difference for me. especially with socks and underwear but also shirts and shorts and sweatpants, always buy the same exact brand and style. find the best option for each member of your family and stick to it across the years. laundry day will become MUCH less of a task. 👍
Yes, this, and if you find an item you like buy multiple of that item in different colours and you have a bunch of different looking clothes that feel the same to you. Also with the underwear you can actually throw them out when they get holes, that is allowed, and you can buy a few extra packs and just have them there as spares for when you throw some out, just swap them into your drawers as you remove broken ones.
OMG yes. I finally standardized my pants (specific scrub bottoms that look office-professional but have specialized pockets) and tops (floral polos. They never look wrinkly). It's so much easier to dress and put clothes away.
Socks are optional. I don't have a problem with socks, I just don't wear them /joking
Clothes don't have to go in the closet. If they're your clothes and they don't get in anyone's way, your family doesn't have a right to complain about you storing them on a pile on your bedroom floor, if putting clothes away is making you so miserable.
Alternatively, maybe strike up a deal with another household member for them to do your laundry in exchange for you doing some other household chore for them (e.g. you'll take out the bins when it's their turn to do the bins, you'll cook all their meals, etc).
I find listening to audio books or watching a favourite show or chatting with a friend on the phone helps my brain while folding so I'm unaware i did it.
I find my struggle is tasks like this gets so monotonous. Repeat boredom is the part that bugs my brain. it's all like "cant we just do something else?" So i make sure to have prepped a secondary activity for my brain to be distracted by while the body goes through the motions.
OK, so I have ADHD and absolutely hate tasks like laundry. I have found a few different solutions which have worked at various points in time depending on my available means.
When I was drying clothing by hanging I started hanging my t-shirts on hangers to dry. This meant I could get them out to dry in one handful and that once dry they could all just be put into the wardrobe with no extra fuss. Underwear and socks were handled by hanging on a little clothes horse and then just thrown in together into a drawer. I make sure to only have one type of identical sock so I can not pair them.
Now that was all good and fine but my means have increased and life has gotten better, so my methods have changed. I can now afford a heat pump dryer. This is an absolute game changer. I put washing on, when it is done I move it from the washing machine to the dryer, then when it is done I put it away.
The dryer is super efficient, using way less power than a traditional dryer and hurting the clothing way less. It uses the same system as an air conditioner to pull moisture out of the air while it throws the clothes through the warm dry air.
Because I have enough clothes now I can also do a smalls load and a separate load for just t-shirts and then all the other clothes like pants and jumpers. Because of that I can sort the smalls much faster and then put them in my new storage.
I have an 8 cube shelf. In each cube I have a fabric box which has one type of item. I have two for t-shirts, two for pants, one for underwear, one for socks, and two for anything else. I just dump items in with no folding or sorting. If I want a shirt I can pick the colour but because all the shirts are the same brand and model that is the only difference I have to deal with. My pants are basically all of a type and are really only summer or winter gear, so I just have long pants on one box and shorts in the other.
The great thing is the simplicity. Shirts are never folded, rolled, or in any other way managed. They are just thrown in. I try to empty one first and then fill that one first from the dryer so they all get rotated through, otherwise they would go musty after a time, but apart from that it is super low effort.
I also have the same for towels and bedsheets, but for bedsheets I put the full set inside one pillow case with the fitted sheet as the last item in so when I use them I pull out and apply the fitted sheet, then the flat sheet, then the second pillowcase to cover the pillows. My kitchen stuff is also similar with a single basket on top of the fridge with tea towels and microfibre cloths so I can just replace them daily or more as needed. I really should put a mini basket in the kitchen for the dirty ones but for now I just throw them into the laundry.
Overall I spend less electricity washing clothes and drying them in the dryer than I did rewashing clothes I had put off hanging. I think it is a worthy trade and saves me from avoiding the washing too much.
I can recommend going a step further, if you can afford it. Get an all-in-one combo ventless heat pump washer/dryer. That's a lot of buzzwords, but it's not a compromise, it's pretty much the best of all worlds. I have one (made by GE) and it's basically perfect except that it spent the first few months of its life constantly nagging me to install "the App" and/or connect it to the Internet, which I absolutely did not do and it eventually gave up.
This is not a traditional ventless all-in-one, there's nothing traditional about it. It uses a heat pump (effectively using both sides of it in fact), it runs on a single 120V socket, and doesn't vent any moisture into the house nor does it suck any conditioned air out of the house during heating/cooling seasons. It washes first and then dries the entire load in one go. It doesn't vent because it dumps the condensed water down the drain instead using the cold side of the heat pump to condense the into liquid and the hot side to actually heat and dry the clothes. It's actually even more energy efficient than you imagine, because a lot of the heat is in fact generated by the latent heat of the water as it goes through phase change, with wet air cooling slower and dry air heating faster, it's some bizarre physics at work but liquid water at room temperature is actually a huge energy battery and the heat pump effectively uses some of the water's own energy to heat and dry the clothes. It can even do unique things like blow air first before the wash (called "pet hair mode") to get most of the hair and lint out so it doesn't go into the pump and the drain.
Besides being energy efficient and smart, this significantly reduces laundry effort too. No more switching from washer to dryer. It's start-and-forget. Other than cleaning the filter and occasional maintenance like vacuuming the lint out and refilling the detergent tank, it's a magic machine where dirty clothes go in and a few hours later clean clothes come out with an absolute minimum of energy used. If it could sort and fold them too it would be absolutely perfect, but alas, we're not there yet. It's still pretty damn good compared to a traditional laundry experience.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_SNExtznd4
As an adult who has just sacrificed a box room for a Boaxel system with a bunch of open boxes to toss my clothes into (similar to your shelf system but visually less messy), I don’t understand why you can’t go back to a system that worked for you before.
Laundry is also my mortal enemy. The folding mostly, so now I’ve done away with that. Little basket things on each shelf for various clothing items, it’s much more aligned to my natural style. Use it, don’t fight it.
During the summer months, you can just get away with wearing a swimsuit most days. Just get used to going in the pool pretty frequently after workouts and voila, your laundry and shower is taken care of. I used to ride my bike to the pool every day then do this, but I was like 10 so nobody raised an eyebrow
Next time I'll just roll a die to decide who does the laundry.
I think there’s unavoidable costs to doing laundry.
But I try to minimize them by doing stuff like rolling my t-shirts instead of folding them.
Also, you mentioned UX design. Well, I do a bit of Lean, if you want to call it that. In particular, I minimize switching costs by focusing on one type of item at a time. For example, first I get all the boxers out of the pile of washed clothes. Then I check they’re not inside out. Then I roll them. And then I place them where they have to go.
I adopt a production line mindset. And it can become a game. How fast can I do it this time?
Washing smalls separately from large items cab be safer for the clothes and easier for sorting. Also t-shirts can be washed all together and then you have a load of just t-shirts, much simpler, no switching, and you can really get in the groove.
Washing smalls separately from large items cab be safer for the clothes and easier for sorting. Also t-shirts can be washed all together and then you have a load of just t-shirts, much simpler, no switching, and you can really get in the groove.
Try getting a little bit victorian with it.
Back in the day, washing machines didn't exist. Mass manufacturing didn't exist. Clothes were very expensive so people couldn't just wear a thing once, then put it in a machine to wash it. So they had other solutions that worked.
They would protect their clothes from getting dirty by wearing full coverage undergarments. Linen was quite common. This layer protects your actual clothes from the gross oils and stuff from your body. You have to wash the undergarment but your main clothing is kept clean and only rarely needs washing. Reduces the laundry to the minimal level that could be done by hand.
Can you dry your clothes on the hangers that go into your closet & just move them into the closet when dry? Or dry them in the closet with the door open? Do you need the rack at all? I dry my air dry stuff on hangers a lot.
I was going to say merino & silk, because I don't have to wash mine often, until I read that it's the putting away you don't like.
Or maybe get nice baskets on a shelf, or a dresser with drawers, and go back to your sort-and-toss.
ETA: or trade chores. Everyone in my house does their own laundry, but my husband washes the dishes, I put them away, because he doesn't mind washing dishes, I hate it. I cook because he can't. If there is something else you can do for your spouse that they don't like, maybe they would put away your clothes in return.
The only way for it to never bother you is to pay someone to do your laundry. Other than that it's a chore that will always be there no matter what. You can also have a deal with your partner, make her/him do the laundry and you take care or something else.
Rip off clothing, makes undressing also a lot more fun.
I have a clothes drying rack. I layer shirts on one side and pants on the other, so I really only have to put away socks and underwear.
I work two jobs, so this is what I do. Hope this helps.
Idk i just do it to make my girlfriend happy and that's plenty of motivation lol. You just have to budget the time in, i just budget 1.5 hours and i do it all slow and chill and it works out.
honestly I find hangers the best option. shoe caddies are nice for things that just can't go on hangers like socks.
If you have the money, use a wash and fold laundry service
I use a drying rack, too. I hang clothes neatly because I’ve been too lazy to iron anything ever since I started doing my own laundry. (I don’t usually wear fancy button shirts though)
I don’t use clips for most things, just hang t-shirts and boxer briefs neatly folded in half over the line. So on lazy days, I just pick them up folded like this. This uses much more 2D shelf space in the closet than when folding properly, but it’s faster.
Another option would be using hangers only. Put wet clothes directly onto hangers to dry them. When dry, grab the hangers and put them in the closet. Requires a closet with more hanging bar space and hangers than shelves.
For socks, having the same pair (maybe 2-3 different heights/thicknesses for different seasons) helps so you can just throw them in the same 2-3 boxes all together and usually you just have 1 type of sock per season anyway.
Trousers are less of a problem for me. Not sure how common it is, but where I live it’s common to wear the same pair for a week or so. Well, 1 pair of work trousers and 1 pair of normal trousers/shorts per week. Depending on how much you go outside in your free time, even less washing for the normal pairs…
As another user also noted, reducing the amount of laundry also helps. Maybe look into different fabrics. For example, (merino) wool t-shirts can be worn multiple times before they start to stink. Bamboo viscose or wood fibres like Modal or Tencel (e.g. 70%/30% mixed with cotton) also stinks less. Doesn’t dry as fast as wool, but not relevant to you. Maybe look into hiking/trekking or onebag forums.
elves. keebler specifically, but elves
Wear a bikini
Mine get folded as I take them off the line and then mostly sit on the dresser or in a basket until the next week. Yes, we could put them away but also we have other crazy messes we need to work on too and it's the least of the problems (2 kids, 2 pets, both work, no family help etc.)
If you can afford it, get a housekeeper.