How Doing One Load of Laundry Every Day Helped Get Me Out of ‘Survival Mode’
I have this couch in our loft sitting right outside our living room that I desperately want to get rid of. I told my husband awhile back that nobody ever sits on it and we should get rid of it to make space for the kids’ toys.
He laughed and responded with, “But where will all the laundry sit?”
And he wasn’t wrong. Even as a SAHM who was home most days I used to wait all week until one day I would do all the laundry at once and it would sit on that couch for another week, pulling out toddler leggings and clean underwear as we needed it. I can imagine most of you can relate to the scene.
One day I decided I didn’t want to keep living like this and we needed a better system. So I stopped doing laundry in big batches and started doing one load every single day and I haven’t had a laundry basket graveyard since.
Why Saving It All for One Day Isn’t Working
I understand it feels like you don’t have time to do one load of laundry each day, but lets break it down. When you save it all for one day it builds up faster than you can tackle it and by the time you do it, there are six loads. Six loads means 2 hours of folding and putting away that you’ll never do. So the pile sits. And sits. Staring at you and telling you that you’re “bad” every time you walk by it. I never minded folding laundry, but it was my inability to carve out 2 hours in a week at once to fold and put it away that I couldn’t do.
With one load a day I have smaller loads and it takes 5-10 minutes out of each day to just fold a simple load and put it away. Once you get into a habit of when you’ll start the load, switch the load and fold the load it becomes a system you can’t believe you didn’t implement sooner.
How to Anchor the Habit So It Actually Sticks
The secret to making this work isn’t willpower. It’s anchoring each step to something you already do every day. This is called habit stacking, which means attaching a new behavior to an existing one so it becomes automatic instead of something you have to remember or force yourself to do..
Everyone is different but here’s what works for me.
Morning: I start a load of laundry when I pass the laundry room on my way to make coffee. The coffee maker is non-negotiable so now neither is the laundry.
Nap time: I switch the load to the dryer when I put my toddler down for her nap. I’m walking past the laundry room anyway and it takes thirty seconds.
Evening: I fold the load while my oldest cleans up the loft and her bedroom. We’re both resetting the house at the same time and it doesn’t feel like an extra chore. It feels like part of the rhythm.
Anchoring that habit helps so much and it becomes just laundry, a systemized task as easy as brushing your teeth each day, instead of a pile staring at you.
The Product That Makes This System Run Smoothly
One of the best products I never let myself run out of and one that genuinely makes this system easier are Shout Color Catcher Sheets.
They help maintain the original color of all your clothes with each wash and prevent color runs, which means I can wash whites and my daughter’s pink clothes in the same load without a second thought. No sorting by color or worrying about something bleeding onto something else.
And because I’m not sorting by color anymore I can wash each load by person instead. One load for my oldest. One load for my toddler. One for my husband and me. Everything comes out of the dryer already sorted by whose room it goes in. Folding and putting away becomes almost effortless because you’re never untangling whose clothes are whose mid fold.
A few other things that keep this system running smoothly in our house:
A good laundry basket with handles: This option has the BEST colors for kid’s bedrooms and I love the handles so you can carry it from bedroom to laundry room.
The BEST stain remover if you have kids: This gets pasta sauce, grass stains and all kinds of mystery stains out of my toddler’s clothes in the first wash! I wont use anything else.
Washing machine cleaner: This product has been purchased over 50k times in the last month alone because it’s SO great for keeping your washing clean and mildew free.
Try It For One Week
If the laundry basket graveyard is a familiar sight in your house, try this for seven days. Just one load every morning, switched at nap time and folded in the evening. See how it feels by day five. It won’t be perfect immediately but it will feel better than the couch.
And when your husband asks where all the laundry is going to sit, you can tell him it won’t need to anymore.