This Weekend is Your Chance to Catch Up on One Important Bit of Housekeeping
Apartment Therapy Weekend Projects is a guided program designed to help you get the happy, healthy home you’ve always wanted, one weekend at a time. Sign up now for email updates so you never miss a lesson.
We have a mammoth amount of laundry in our household. With two little bib-refusing kids who spill food on their clothes, two active little boys who play soccer, and an almost-teen who is starting to experiment with fashion, the laundry piles up as we breathe.
Believe me, I’ve tried the tricks. Doing a load a day, from washing machine to dryer to folding to putting everything away, is great, but I’m bad at it. Maybe because when I parse it out like that it feels like laundry is a constant part of my daily life? The thing is, though, that it needs to be or the job gets way too overwhelming.
Even with “outsourcing” the laundry to the kids who are old enough to do their own (the 12 year old, 11 year old, and 8 year old all do their own), the laundry gets out of control fast and often. Catch-up sessions are often necessary and, boy, do those re-sets feel good.
This weekend, you’re going to do whatever you need to do to start the week off with all the clothing and household items freshly laundered and put away. Doesn’t that sound amazing?
This Weekend: Catch up on your laundry.
First, take a deep breath and take stock of the situation. Is the laundry area an explosion of mixed-up clothes? Are hampers overflowing? Is there wet wash already in the washer? Start in one spot, making it your priority to get that first load going. Re-wash the smelly clothes that have sat in the washer or throw in a dirty load that’s been sitting in a laundry basket in the hallway.
Once that first load is going, get the next load ready. Sort what you need to sort so you have a lineup of what will go into the washer next. Clear out or decide on a folding area so as soon as your clothes come out of the dryer, you fold them. Challenge yourself to fold while the clothes are warm. Have hangers ready to hang items that get hung in the closet.
While you’re waiting for your first load to get to the warm clothes stage, fold any clean clothes that have been sitting around, the pile you’ve been pulling from to get clean undies, you know the one. We all have one sometimes. Put those clean clothes where they belong and take a moment to enjoy both your reclaimed space and your fully stocked drawers.
Once you get the lineup going, catching up on your laundry is just a matter of rotating everything through the different stations of wash, dry, fold, put away. Get yourself a good podcast or audiobook and get in the zone.
If you don’t have much (or any!) laundry to catch up on, consider washing something that’s not washed too often, such as your bathmats or shower curtains.
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You can catch up with weekend projects right here. Share your progress with us and others by posting updates and photos on Instagram and Twitter with the hashtag #atweekendproject.
Remember: This is about improvement, not perfection. Each week you can either choose to work on the assignment we’ve sent you, or tackle another project you’ve been meaning to get to. It’s also completely okay to skip a weekend if you’re busy or not feeling the assignment.