Different Day, Same Laundry

In this day and age, much of our labor is made light by technological advances. The dirty dishes are washed and dried to a sparkling finish with just the touch of a button. We can program the vacuum, telling it where and when to clean. The garden is watered while we slumber and we ride in comfort while mowing the lawn. But in spite of all this, doing the laundry is still an all day chore. Don't get me wrong. I'm exceedingly grateful that I don't have to haul my laundry down to the Jordan River and beat it on a rock to get it clean. But laundry is still one of those jobs that is never truly finished. Think about it. Even when you have washed, dried, folded and put away the last load, the clothes you (and all of your dirt covered children) are wearing are still dirty. It almost makes me want to have an annual Stay-At-Home-Nudist-Day so that at least once a year I can honestly say that all the laundry is done.

With the end goal of getting the laundry (at least most of it) done in the shortest amount of time as possible, I'm always looking for time saving techniques. I have my family sort their clothes as they put them in the laundry so that on laundry day I can do a quick scan for red socks in the whites and then just stick the entire pile in the washer. I have numerous laundry bags for washing small items so that they don't get lost in the wash. I have a special bag where the partnerless socks live so that when I find a spare I don't have to sort through twenty seven drawers to find the match. I iron by spritzing things with a water bottle and throwing them in the dryer. And this week I employed a new folding technique that makes folding the dozens of t-shirts this household owns a breeze (Thanks, Tiff!). Not only was it fast and easy, but everything looks so nice in the drawers! At least everything looks nice in my drawers. My children's idea of putting their clothes away is to chuck them in the general direction of their dressers and hope some of it lands in the drawers.

So in spite of the fact that laundry is still a never ending adventure, I've picked up one more tool in my quest to make laundry day as fast and painless as possible.