September 21, 2009 | BlogHer, Housekeeping
Note: Do you ever spend time on a writing assignment only to realize that you weren’t assigned the laundry post, you were assigned the post about messy bedrooms? No. Just me, huh? Whatever. Here is a post I wrote for BlogHer about how I am a laundry slacker.
My philosophy on doing laundry is entirely based on a two word phrase. “As needed.”
I’m not kidding. I wash my towels when they get yucky, I wash my sheets when they get dirty. I wash my underwear every time I wear it, but that is underwear. It touches my butt.
I mean it. I don’t have a laundry schedule. I have a big pile of laundry at the top of my stairs, a small pile of laundry in my bedroom and a medium sized pile in my laundry room.
My cats peed on the pile in my laundry room – this is how I know it is time to throw in a load.
See? As needed.
My mother loves to do laundry. I have no idea why. I guess we all have a pet chore. Mine is… okay maybe not everybody has a pet chore. I guess there is housework I hate less than the other domestic sciences, I don’t mind vacuuming. That isn’t to say I vacuum every day – or even once a week. Look – I hate housekeeping, that is why I hired a cleaning service. (This is also why I work so much, so that I can afford the aforementioned cleaning service.) The thing is that they don’t do my laundry. (or my dishes now that I think about it, but I would definitely pay more if they would. I hate doing dishes too.)
This brings me back to the whole “as needed” thing. I need to do the wash because my utility room (fine, basement) smells like cat urine. if my laundry room smelled reasonable I might wait until somebody ran out of underwear.
I’m not a total wash slacker. Once I actually get down to it I separate lights and darks. In fact, I usually have a white load, a black load, a blue and green load and a red/pink/purple/orange load. See? There is a benefit to waiting a long time. Load specificity.
Whatever it takes to justify it, I suppose.
Listen, it isn’t as if I am an organized human being with a laundry deficiency. I have no aversion to washing clothes I am just a generally lazy person and a procrastinator. I don’t have a schedule for anything – grocery shopping, car maintenance, doctors appointments, sex, writing, dishes, exercise, gardening, changing sheets – all as needed.
I had been coveting for three years when it finally came down so far in price that it was affordable.
