Back on Track and Full Cycle*

If making an accommodation is the kiss of death to a home improvement project, there's nothing like a hard deadline to get it back on track.  With guests arriving in just 3 days, we need to get all of the mud/laundry room stuff out of the guest room and back where it belongs pronto.

It's looking pretty good.  Most of the stuff is back--now we're just waiting for the hooks.  And the shoe bins (can't mop the floor because we don't have a mop head (who knew a refill mop head would be so difficult to find?)  Can't put the rugs back in until the floor is mopped.  Can't put the shoe bins in until the rugs are back).

And speaking of laundry...

When I was first married (and in college, and in high school, and, well, for as long as I've been doing laundry), I would do laundry whenever I had a full load, every week or two (ah, for those blissful, carefree days, when I had the time to do a load of laundry whenever I wanted...).  After the arrival of the first baby, I instituted a laundry day once a week.  Seriously, how in the world does an 8 pound helpless itty bitty generate so. much. dirty laundry?  And that worked well for me. 

When the next one arrived, I moved to doing laundry 2 days a week, because myword, if one produces double, two make the dirty laundry quadruple.  And that worked well for me.  Until recently.  And by "recently" I mean over four years ago when our youngest joined the crew.

It seems like ever since then I've been struggling with the laundry.  I never, ever it get all done on laundry day.  More often than not, in order to dry a new load I have to find an empty laundry basket in which to dump the clean clothes that have been sitting in the dryer getting wrinkly since last laundry day.  And woe to all of us when I forget and leave a wet load in the washer for 3 or 4 days.  Yikes.

I know that lots of people out there do at least one load of laundry every day, and I've tried that.  But ohmygosh, I don't want to have to deal with laundry every. day!  I honestly don't know how they can stand it--it made me bonkers. 

And I've noticed a little something about myself over the years.  The more loads of laundry I need to get done in a day, the more likely it is that I will actually complete them all, washed, dried, sorted, folded, and put away.  It looks a little something like this:

I know.  It seems a little strange to me, too.

Oh, wait.  You weren't thinking it's strange that I drew a graph were you?  I meant that it's strange that the more I have to do, the more likely it'll all get done.  So basically, if I try to do one load of laundry every day, there is very little chance that I will ever be caught up.

So I've come full cycle (I mean circle) in my laundry washing schedule.  I'm back to washing laundry just once a week.  And I have been pleasantly surprised to find that it seems easier to get it all done.  All I can say is, it's working for me.  For now.

*I made a punny!  Sorry, just couldn't resist.