So, one of my goals for this week was to finish all the laundry in the house by Wednesday. Turns out, I had so much dirty laundry backed up that, even with setting my alarm and changing a load over every hour, I wasn't able to finish it all. How embarrassing! Here it is, almost 5:00 on Thursday and I'm still doing laundry. Granted, I was at the museum until about 4:00, so I've only done one load so far today. But, still.
Laundry has always been a problem for me. I've tried Flylady's method of a load a day for years. But, something always comes along that keeps me from doing a load. There are just always days in my life where I am running from morning to night with no time to stop. Or, there are times when my back just won't allow me to get it done. Then, the laundry backs up.
Such a thing happened to me a few months ago. My back was really hurting me. I could barely even walk for a couple of weeks. It was the worst it had been in years. As a result, we were operating in emergency laundry mode. You know, those times when you stay up late to wash a load, because you know if you don't you will be out of clean underwear tomorrow? Or maybe you don't know. Maybe that's just me.
Slowly, but surely I've been catching up. But, when I say slowly, I mean s l o w l y. I'd try to do a load or two every day, but didn't always have time to do two or more. And of course, there were those days when I wasn't able to do even one load. So, it never seemed as if I was making any progress.
Then, several days ago, I found a blog written by a woman who, I swear we were separated at birth! The blog is called A Slob Comes Clean and it is written by a lady named Nony. Like me, she is also a Flylady dropout. Among the many, many things I've learned by reading her blog from the beginning (I still haven't caught up. I think I'm reading posts from 2010 right now.) is that having a laundry day - a day when you do all the laundry in the house - actually works for some people.
You see, I had read from Flylady how the "best way" to do laundry was to do a load a day. She sent out tons of email testimonials touting the benefits of a load a day and condemning doing it all at once. Don't get me wrong, I learned a lot from Flylady and, if that works for you, great! But, she often has a my-way-or-the-highway attitude about housekeeping. And I bought into it. I really believed that the only way to possibly keep up with laundry was by doing a load a day. Except that I didn't keep up with the laundry. Sure, if I had actually done a load every single day, I probably would have been okay. But, that just never happened!
Then, I read Nony talk about how she prefers to do all her laundry at once and on a set day of the week. When I read about how she loved the feeling of being "done" and not having to worry about it until the next week, I had one of those "duh" moments - one of the moments when you wonder why you never looked at something from that angle before. I'd always thought of a laundry day as a horrible day full of nothing but my least favorite chore.
But, a laundry day might be just what I need. I would have that visible progress that I so often want. I would actually be able to see the piles getting smaller and smaller until there were no more piles! I would have a feeling of being done! This is very unlike the load-a-day method where it seems to never end and you know you'll just be back again tomorrow. Plus, I wouldn't even have to think about laundry again for a whole week! Talk about freedom!
So, I am starting the process. I think that Mondays might be the best day for me to have a laundry day, so I'll try that first. It might end up moving to a different day, though. I'll have to play around with it and see. The first thing I have to do is get all the laundry done for this week (I'm starting late in the week). And because I'm so backed up, there is a lot more laundry than just one week's worth. That is why it is taking so long. Hopefully, it won't take nearly as long from here on out.
I'll keep you updated on how it goes. But, I'm feeling hopeful that the laundry situation might start getting better!
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