If you ask most guys, doing the laundry is a colossal waste of time.
Now I’m not saying we don’t want the laundry done. We almost all appreciate having clean clothes, bedding, etc. etc. Honest we do. We also recognize that from an economics perspective, that doing laundry is almost always cheeper than, say for example, buying new clothes. That’s not the complaint.
The complaint is the time element. From the moment we ‘sort’ our laundry, to the moment we put the last clean item we’ve folded out of the dryer, everything we do has to take second shrift to getting the laundry done. Obviously there is a little bit of exaggeration, just not much.
I’m presuming for most people that you have a limited amount of spece to dedicate to dirty and clean cloths. If you think you don’t, it’s probably time to think again. At the very least, recognize that there are chemical processes involving body fluids, (sweat and others) that will negatively impact the wearabile lifetime of your clothing, even more than the abrasion and dirt you pick up from the environment you work in. With some exceptions. Cable pullers and related jobs almost come with a clothing replacement budget.
If you wear a dress shirt on a warm day, and don’t get it laundered in the next 48 to 96 hours, you should expect that sweat stains, ring around the collar, and the odd food or beverage spill will leave a permanent mark on your shirt.
Stop at a pet store, or even Spencers some day, and pick up a hand held blacklight. Before you throw the next pair of jeans or slacks into the washer, find a reasonably dark area, and use that blacklight to illuminate the front.
As I say, we fully redognize that having clean clothing is to our advantage.
So why is this an issue for guys? On the assumption that you don’t sort your laundry into separate piles as you prepare for bed, from the moment you start sorting out your laundry, you have committed to getting the laundry done. My own process is to sort into piles such as ‘Jeans and Trousers’ ‘t-shirts’ ‘other shirts’ ‘socks and underwear’ ‘sweaters and sweat-shirts’ ‘towels’ ‘linnens’ and a ‘miscelanious’ pile that catches a few other odds and ends. That’s 8 piles. And depending on how long it’s taken to get there, I may be aggregating some piles, I might put the t-shirts in with the ‘other shirts’ or the ‘miscelanious’ in with ‘socks and underwear’ for example. So we get down to 6, or occasionally 4 or 5 piles that each become a ‘load’ of laundry. If you have access to your own laundry facilities and don’t need to budget specifically for coin-op machines, you might also break up some piles by color. If you’r really pressed for time, you might just stuff everything into a duffle bag and wash it all at once if it works as a single load.
So you’ve got loads of laundry to dump into the washer. For whatever reason, you get to the washing machine, and throw in a load of laundry, with the soap, and possibly bleach or softener if that’s part of your routine. Start the machine, and.
OK, perhaps you planned this far ahead, and have something to do. Maybe you grabbed a book to read or study. Perhaps you have a magazine handy. Who knows. But the one thing you know is that shortly after the wash cycle is done, you’re going to have to move those clothes into the dryer, and get the next load of washing into the washer. The worst part is that a washer takes betwen 20 and 30 min to cycle through a load. So forget about going back upstairs and watching a movie. You won’t have time. If you have edited the comercials out of a 30 min episode of something, that might work out well, but often enough finding that show, and doing that editing is going to tie up about the amount of time that the comercials took in the first place.
So you chewed up 30 min, and head back to the laundry room. You move that first load of laundry into the dryer, throw in a softener sheet (unless you started with a load of linnen or towels…) and start the dry cycle. You throw the next load of laundry into the washer, and start that cycling. Now what?
Well, the washer is still going to take between 20 and 30 min to finish the cycle, and you may have eaten up 3 min filling the washer and getting it going, but that’s not going to affect what you do now quite as much. That’s because the limiting factor this time is the dryer. You did remember to check the lint screen right? With a clean lint screen, and a fairly light load, the dryer might take 30 min to dry the load of clothing. But if your household involves dogs, cats, other sheading animals, etc. that load is very likely going to add lint to the screen. And unless you are laundering daily, you are probably going to have gotten more than a ‘light load’ in the dryer. So time goes up. Figure on between 45 min and an hour. Hmm… perhaps enough time to get the carpet vacumed. Probably should have used that 20 min wash cycle to pick up a bit first though. Well, that’s OK, perhaps we can get the living room done.
Something to keep in mind here is that the first load in the dryer is likely to be the longest time you have available to do anything else. I wouldn’t advise heading out on a grocery run though. Whatever you choose to do, remember that as soon as the dryer load is done, you want to get those clothes out of the dryer and folded. Otherwise the time they spend setting in the dryer, cooling will introduce wrinkles that you probably don’t want.
So you get the first load out of the dryer into a basket to go to folding, the second load into the dryer, and the next load into the washer. 45 min to do something, right? Well, sort of. You checked the lint screen again, Right? OK, no matter what, you are going to want to use some of the 45 min here to take care of this load of dry clothes, while they are still warm. Unless you’ve gone to an all permanent press wardrobe, you will probably want to sort through the shirts and trousers for those that could use ironing, and set those aside. Oh, this first load was all socks and shorts? Well, start the sorting and folding. My own process is to separate the socks from the shorts, fold the shorts, then break out the socks into pairs, or if there are a bunch of ‘common’ socks, say a 6 pack of white tube-socks, or something, get those into a pile to be folded from quickly. Up to you.
Hmmm… how long did that take? What you didn’t think to check what time you started the dryer? Well, let’s presume it took about 20 min. Perhaps we take the piles of socks and shorts, and put them away. That may save time later.
Might be time for a can of pop and a quick sandwitch though. Yeah, that works.
OK, the second load in the dryer is done, so we cycle through that. T-shirts this time. (Bane of my laundry time to tell the truth. ) Oddly enough, I’ve found that t-shirts take longer to sort out, and fold than just about anything else in the laundry. Well, ironing those dress shirts that need it can take longer, but I’ve gotten away from that as much as possible. In any case the second load out of the drier seems to take at least as long as the fourth load in the washer takes to wash. So by the time I’m done with this load, I can tell that I’ve got about 20 to 30 min to do something with.
Hmm… a quick bathroom break, and check the help wanted section of the local Craig’s List to see if anyone is offering to do laundry for a fee. Drat, no one. Quick review of the e-mail in-box while I’m on the computer, dump the spam, quick pass through the lists, nothing immediately interesting. Hmm, a couple of messages that need a response, mark them as un-read so that I remember to do that later on.
Next load. Jeans and stuff out of the dryer, towels and bedding in, No dryer sheet this time, Lint tray clean. No change left in the bottom of the washing machine, dryer on ‘hot’ for the linnens and towels, quick fold of the jeans. Everything gets put away except the linnens and towels drying. Probably take them about 35 min, and I was able to consolidate things to just the 4 loads, so nothing sitting in the washer.
You know, it’s a toss for what to do this time. Perhaps write up a blog entry. After all, I’m going to need more time for the e-mail than just a quick ‘got it, thanks!’ message. And that could easily take an hour or more. Someone else in the building is likely to need the washer and dryer. What? it’s 9:00 PM? Already? Shesh, where did the time go. I could have gotten something else done in those 5 hours. Drat.
I know, I’ll blog on why guys hate doing the laundry so much…
