The Lazy Genius Podcast - #21: The Lazy Genius Does Laundry

Episode Date: May 8, 2017

Stuff that's mentioned... When Laundry Eats You Alive How to Iron Without An Iron (the comments are great here, too) If you want a detailed rundown of detergents, this post from The Sweethome has A LOT of great information. Interested in the Turkish towels I mentioned? I got ours from Bathstyle on Etsy over four years ago, and they're still the best. Follow me on Instagram! @thelazygenius This podcast is hosted by Kendra Adachi and executive produced by Kendra Adachi, Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Defender. With the towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a waiting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. Amazon presents Laura versus fruit flies. Swarming your fruit and terrorizing your kitchen. These little freaks multiply at a rate that would make a rabbit say, yo. Chill.

But Laura shopped on Amazon and saved on cleaning spray, countertop wipes, and fly traps. Hey, fruit flies, your baby boom ends here. Save the Everyday with Amazon. Hi, lazy geniuses. This is Kendra, and you are listening to the Lazy Genius podcast. Here, I'm going to help you be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. Today's episode, episode 21, The Lazy Genius Does Laundering. The pitch today is pretty basic.

We all hate laundry. Some of you weirdos like really enjoy doing it, but I don't know anybody who likes it from start to finish. From the washing to the drying, do you sort or do not sort? And then you have to like fold everything. And for the love, it has to get put away. It's the worst. So today in the playbook, we're going to do three things. We're going to talk about laundry day versus doing a load every day.

We're going to hit five tiny changes that could make us. a big difference. And then I want to tell you that the order of your loads matters. So let's get to it. Okay, so do you do laundry day or do you do a load of laundry every day? All right, so let me tell you about what I do. I am a laundry day person. I love to do laundry. Well, correction. I don't like to do laundry, but it's easier if I do it all in one day. See, there are three options here. You can do a load every day. You can do all of it one day. Or you can do it as needed, which let's be real.

If you wait until you need to do laundry, you end up doing a laundry day anyway. Because most of the time when we see a problem, it's not obvious until it's a little bit overwhelming. Until you're like, oh wait, I'm completely out of clothes. Or, oh, wait, I can't walk into my bathroom because the hamper is so full. So I feel like waiting until you need to do laundry. is not always the best idea because essentially you're forcing yourself into a full day of laundry that you didn't plan for that you might have margin not might not have margin for. So let's skip that option. I just don't think it's going to work for anybody very well. So let's talk about

the difference in doing all of your laundry one day a week versus doing a load every single day. Now if you work outside of the home, having a laundry day is probably not going to work for you because frankly, I don't want you spending your Saturday or your Sunday doing laundry. Like that's so lame. Let's save those things for fun stuff or for going to see your kids' games or whatever is that you need to do on the weekends. There are so many other things fun and necessary that need to happen on the weekends. I don't think laundry should be one of them.

That means if you work outside of the home, perhaps you can consider doing one load every single day. Now that can be really tricky, but there are a couple of ways that I would like to encourage you, to do it if you're feeling a little bit overwhelmed. There are some people who put a load in in the mornings and, like, first thing in the morning and run it, and then, like, you put it in the dryer before breakfast or, you know, like, kind of all these different things. But I am going to suggest just the tiniest bit of a difference of a little way of doing

your load of laundry. Rather than starting that load in the morning, I would encourage you to, you can go ahead and gather the clothes and actually put them in the washing machine, put the detergent, in, all the good stuff. You can even set it. You know, like you can even set the settings ready to go, but don't turn it on until you come home from work. Okay? Because here's what happens. If you run it in the morning, a lot of times you forget because you're frantic and then it sits wet and gross all day long. Or you run it and then you do make it to the dryer, but maybe it's like wrinkly things and you don't have time to take them out and hang them up before they get super wrinkly. So trying to do

that laundry in the morning is really tricky. You can, however, probably gather enough clothes to run a single load of laundry, but then just have them ready. If you can work it into your mindset, into your routine, you walk in the door, you drop your keys and everything else in your hands, whatever you have, and then immediately walk to your washer and press the button, right? It's ready to go, and you just press start, and then let it run. More than likely, that load is going to be done washing right around the time that you might be in transition to something. else. Like you might be done making dinner. You guys might be sitting down to dinner. You might have just finished eating dinner. There are a number of things that it could be, but more than likely that

30 to 60 minutes that it takes for your clothes to wash, you're about to transition into something else after you get home from work. So if you can work the transitioning of the clothes from the washer to the dryer into the transition of whatever's happening right there, where it's going to the table, finishing at the table, whatever it might be, go ahead and switch those clothes to the dryer. Okay. Now, more than likely, by the time those clothes are done, perhaps you have finished doing, helping your kids with homework, or cleaning up dinner or whatever it might be. Then you can pull out those clothes. Perhaps if you've got kids in your house, they might be asleep or they're big enough that they can take care of themselves. And you pull out those clothes and at the time of day that you really just want to sit down, you know, like the kitchen is clean, you've got your pajamas off, your pajamas on and your bra off probably. you can sit down and just fold laundry. Like you're going to sit anyway. You can fold your laundry and then you can immediately put it away.

Or you can put it away the next morning as you gather the next clothes. The next day's close. But I am going to say, I feel like if you don't put laundry away right away, it doesn't get put away. Can I get an amen? But that is a way that you can consider doing a load every day. I think just fitting it into the morning is really difficult. Now, for the rest of you, I am a huge. proponent of laundry day. Here is why. Laundry day is it only works if you don't have anything else

planned. Now if you have to go to the grocery store or something, it's fine. I'm not saying like, don't talk to anyone, but don't have other tasks that you need to accomplish. Don't also clean the bathrooms. Don't also set up some important meaning that you could do the next day if you work from home. Don't have a big work deadline for yourself on that day. Like if you can make it so that whatever day is laundry day is the day that generally has a little bit more space or you choose to create that space or you just give yourself the freedom to not do anything else. You know, like to not show, have anything to show for your day other than the laundry, which let's be real, man, if you are washing three, four, five, six loads of laundry in one day

from start to finish and they're done, that deserves all the medals. So don't even for a second think that you're not accomplishing anything by not doing, I mean, come on now. besides your accomplishments do not determine your value. Your accomplishments do. But let's try to do laundry on Monday. So here is the thing. If you're not doing anything else,

you can't possibly forget to switch over the clothes, right? You really can't because there's nothing else on your radar that you're doing. So you get up in the morning, you pull out all the clothes, you get them into their piles. We'll talk about sorting in a minute. You get them into their piles and you get started. and once they finish, once a load finishes, you are ready with the next one and you just keep going and you fold a load as it comes out of the dryer. You immediately take it because you're not doing

anything else, right? You're not doing anything else. I mean, obviously you might be like prepping meals or, you know, I'm not saying that you're just like twiddling your thumbs. That's not a real thing. But for the most part, you'll see that the rhythm is easier to establish if it's not being congested by lots of other things. So when a load comes out of the dryer, you get it you take care of it and you put it away right away. And you just keep doing that. And the rhythm works so very well because by the time the clothes are put away, the next one is ready.

Now it does feel a little bit like, I'm a laundry machine, but you kind of get into this groove, at least I do, and it's really gratifying. I'm like, I've done three loads before 10 a.m. This is insane. And they're all put away. What is happening? And we're going to talk about the order of loads.

Remember, that's the last thing we're going to say that that actually really matters. Not just like, I don't mean like for your efficiency of your machines or anything like that. I'm talking about for your own sanity. It's brilliant. So wait for that. But the laundry day makes it so that you finish. You begin and you end on the same day. And then guess what?

You don't have to think about laundry again until the next laundry day. Mine are on Mondays. I do laundry day on Mondays. I love that it's on Mondays because it kind of forces me to sort of slow down in getting started with the week. it gives me a task. It gives me something to accomplish, but it's not like really rushed or hustling, you know, like I'm at home. It sort of angers me at home. It's a really, really lovely thing. I love having laundry day on Monday. Now that might not work for you. It's fine. But if you are home all day, I highly, highly encourage you to have a laundry day. Now, if you currently do not have a laundry day

and you've got like backlog of clothes like so much laundry you can't even stand it granted your first laundry day might be a little insane it might be 12 13 loads and you want to cry and die and shoot me in the face but i encourage you to not do so not just because i don't want you to go to prison but really because it won't always be that way because once you establish a laundry day by the next week or especially week three of having laundry day you're set you're like working three or four, maybe five, six, depending on how many people live in your house. But it's very, very doable. This includes sheets.

This includes towels, all the things. Again, we'll get to the order in a second. Okay. So I do a laundry day. I love a laundry day. I love being done with my laundry on laundry day. Okay, so let's talk about five tiny changes that could make a big difference. Now, even if you do one of these things, it could shave off some minutes, some sanity.

It's worth giving it a try. Number one, wash on a lighter setting. Okay, here's what happens. We all, the things, we just do things the way we've always done them, right? The way that your parents did something, you're like, well, this is how you do it. This is how you make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This is how you load the dishwasher. This is how you do whatever.

This is how you sort clothes. This is how you wash them. And I think for the most part, we all are like, I'm going to wash my clothes on normal because that's what I've always done. But it could be that you don't have to for every single load. Every single load might not require a normal setting. You could do it on a lighter setting on casual or even delicate or something. Basically what happens is if the clothes are not as soiled, your regular pants and shirts, et cetera, et cetera, that are not like super gross, like workout clothes or yard work clothes. I don't have either of those, but that's fine because I don't really do either of those things. But what you can do is just wash them for less time. It's not so much that there's a difference in how. the machine response to those clothes, it just spends it for less time. And if you especially are doing one load a day, this is wonderful because five or ten minutes is five or ten minutes. And then you're

done five or ten minutes sooner. Right. So just think before you wash your clothes, like don't just go automatic into washing it at normal or even like, well, heavy duty seems like a good idea. Let's just go ahead and do that to make sure it gets really clean. Your clothes might not need to get really clean because they might not be really dirty. So just think for a second. You might be able to wash them on a lighter setting and save yourself a few minutes. Number two, don't fold everything. All right. So we like think that everything has to be folded really beautiful and it beautifully and it doesn't. It really, really doesn't. I tend to, because I do a laundry day and because I put everything away, like right away, for things that I know that I'm going to use like that day.

For example, towels, I just take all the towels. We have Turkish towels, those ones with like the, those really thin, colorful towels with the tassels on the end. Oh my gosh, you guys, I love them so much. I love them so much. We love our Turkish towels. Aw isn't something we need to travel for. It's something waiting for us in everyday life, whether in a city street or a moment with a work of art. I'm Dr. Keltner, host of the Science of Happiness podcast.

Join me for Cities of Aw. series on how our public spaces can spark awe, wonder, and enhance the quality of public life. You can find us wherever you listen to your podcasts. I will put a link in the show notes for you to see which ones we have. They're so great. They're super absorbent. They're really, really light and thin, but they, so they're, then they're pretty. They take up with space in the washer, in the dryer, in your drawer, or whatever it is.

They're just so great. They're a little bit more expensive than like your average towel. Super worth it. But basically what I do, we all have a different color. We all have our own color and all the bathrooms. I just go and grab the towels when I do my load of towels. And then when they're dry, I just go and hang them back up again. I'm not going to fold them.

That will be dumb. Or like replace them immediately. That's also dumb because I don't need them yet. So you don't always have to fold all of the things. It may be that like the pajamas that I wear I'm going to wear that night. so I just ball them up and put them like in my closet where they're going to end up every morning anyway, right? Or if your kids are your kids clothes, like don't fold their shirts. Stack them. Just make them flat. You know, like they're still going to fit fine.

Like there may be ways that you don't actually have to fold your clothes. So again, you just notice the way that you've always done things. You don't have to continue to do them that way just because you've always done them. It may be that you can get away with not folding some of your clothes. So number one, wash on a lighter setting. Number two, don't fold everything. Number three, pre-sort. Now, I kind of do this. Like, our kids have their own hamper that they put their clothes in at the end of the day.

We have two, like, baskets in our bathroom. And one is generally, like, darkish clothes and one is lightish clothes. So it's, but it doesn't always, I don't always keep them that way. But it just kind of helps a little bit to sort of have it done. but you know they've got those laundry baskets that have like three or four different cubbies in them you know that you can like roll around it may be if the sorting is the worst for you it might be helpful to you to have a way to pre-sort the clothes now there is a place where it gets a little nuts if you're like well this is this is this warm cold is this permanent breath like all the things and you're like

having to make a decision when you don't really need to you just want to throw your clothes into the hamper which is hard enough by the way to not just put it like on the floor or lay it on a chair or your bed so let's celebrate a victory and not make putting your clothes in the hamper even harder so pre-sort to the point where it keeps you sane not to the point where it makes you more insane so number three pre-sort number four wash pretty much everything in cold this also helps you to not sort as aggressively because generally speaking when we're sorting it's about the water temperature because you want things to bleed on each other, but that doesn't happen in cold water. Now, you may be going, well, I thought that like some things say washing cold, some things say washing hot, et cetera,

et cetera. Here is the quick lowdown on water temperature in your washer. Hot kills germs and bacteria. Okay. You want to wash your towels and sheets in hot water. And they're already very, very sturdy and heavy duty and they can take it. So wash that in hot water. Everything else, washing and cold. Warm water isn't really that necessary because it doesn't get hot enough to necessarily kill germs, like super, super aggressively. And a lot of detergents now are formulated for cold water because people are trying to be more environmentally friendly. Now, if you use powder detergent, you need warm water because you need that warmth to dissolve the detergent. okay so it may be that you just switch to liquid detergent and wash everything in cold that makes it

so much less there's it's less risky that things are going to kind of go all over the place in terms of like dye and all of a sudden your shirts are going to come out like blue or like pink or whatever it is so just wash everything in cold if you're concerned about again about bacteria and germs like if your if your baby blows out a diaper on a changing pad wash that in hot now if something is stained like blood stain, if you wash blood and hot, it will set. So that's another thing. If your clothes are stained, even just like a little bit, if you wash them with any sort of warmer temperature and the water, the stain won't come out. It'll actually set. So cold is just always safe, especially if you use liquid detergent and even a detergent that is formulated for cold water.

You have no risk there. It just is going to work. So wash everything, except for towels and sheets and poopy things in cold. Just go for it. And finally, number five, sort by item, not by color. All right. Now, this is going to dovetail into our final section of the playbook, which is the order of your loads. It matters. So if you sort based on the order them about to tell you, then it's going to make things a lot easier for you. Okay. So here's what goes first. Ready? Sheets. Now, we wash our sheets once, uh, we wash them every other week. Because I know you should probably wash them every week, but that feels like a lot. And frankly, it used to be that it would go like two or three months and I didn't wash any sheets.

You may be that way too. No big deal, man. But now that I've gotten into a rhythm of washing them every other week, it works great. Because I can be like, did I wash them last week? No, I didn't. That means this week I need to. So you start with sheets because here's the thing. You know that saying, is it eat the frog?

Is that the saying? It sounds gross now. But when you start with the hardest thing, you need to start with the hardest thing. you need to start with the hardest, most difficult thing first, because then it just makes everything else a ton easier. So I hate putting sheets on the bud. I mean, it is the absolute worst. How annoying is it when you've been doing laundry and you kind of save the worst for last because

you're like, oh, the sheets and they're like light and big and big, you know, maybe it'll not be that big of a deal? And then when you just want to go to bed or you're trying to get everybody in bed and then nobody has sheets on their beds, it's a nightmare. So if you start with sheets, you're going to be able to get them on the beds immediately, and you have such a victory. You have as many victories as you have beds in your house, and it's so great. So here's what you do. Wash your sheets first, and then dry your sheets.

Obviously, you're going to put the next load in the washer, which we'll talk about. But once the sheets come out of the dryer, immediately take them to their proper rooms and put the sheets on the beds. Just do it and get it done because it's part of your laundry day, right? so and it's so gratifying it is so incredibly gratifying the next load that you're going to wash is the next worst load the hanging things the things that go on hangers that are like wrinkly and stuff now some of you are like folding clothes is the worst but I do think the it's kind of like the dance of trying to keep things flat so that they don't get super wrinkly and they don't have to pull out the iron I don't even know where my iron is so this is a really important dance for me to make sure that my clothes

don't get like that wrinkly where it just looks like we like rolled out of bed. So do your hanging clothes next. Now it may be that this is probably mostly for the grownups or grownup-ish people in your house. It may be that you need to do two loads of these, that there's some things that are like really light or really dark or that you just have more too much to put in one load. You don't want to overfill your washer or your dryer because it takes too long and things don't actually get clean or dry. It throws off the whole rhythm. So, but do all your hanging clothes next. And again, when they come out of the dryer, pick them up, take them to this freshly made, one of the freshly made beds that you've already put the sheets on, spread

everything out, grab a stack of hangers, hang those puppies up, man. It's done. It's done, right? The next load that you do is the folding, the folded clothes. So shorts and T-shirts and pajamas, whatever else it is. Like clothes, not wash claws and stuff like that. Clothes that you put on your body. And then, like, you could do a grown-up pile if you have too many and a kid pile. Like, we do a grown-up pile of me and my husband's clothes, folded clothes, and then I do all the kids' clothes. And it's just the muscle memory and you kind of get in the rhythm of like, oh, this is just all t-shirts and shorts. I know how to fold those. And then you kind of get into a rhythm and it's easy. Versus having a load of like all light-colored things. Then you've got to, you've got to

underwear and socks and t-shirts and this this like little blouse that you need to hang up and it just diverts our attention in all these different directions and it can get really annoying and frustrating so rather than sorting by color this is like that number five thing don't sort by color sort by the actual item and it makes it so much easier to do your laundry okay so you do sheets then you do hanging clothes then you do fold a clothes then you're going to do everybody's underwear and socks all of them together because folding socks is a annoying but when they're all together you just make a bunch of pile of socks and that's like your task in front of you it's like sock time all the socks are right there and then you're not left

with a whole like well i've got three loads left and there's socks and all of them i don't want to put any socks away yet because i don't want to like put them away three times okay i understand the efficiency but then you just have all the socks sitting out for three days so while by doing them all at once like it's just you can put them all away at the same time and it's so much easier than having to like, okay, I'm putting 12 different types of things away in 12 different locations. No, you're putting away just socks. It's so much easier. And then if you would like, you can wash these on hot because more than likely,

your socks and your underwear are going to be just fine in hot water and not like bleeding everywhere, right? So do your underwear and socks next. And then the final load is towels, bath towels, dish towels, wash cloths, you know, anything that's like a square of fabric. Because again, there is nothing more exciting when it comes to laundry. I was telling this to my sister recently. I was like, it's so fun to end with towels because towels are easy.

Like for me, like I said before, I just immediately go hang them up. I don't even fold them. Like, I just go hang on my bad towels. And then it's done. It's so great that that's your last load because you can complete it so quickly. Versus if your last load was hanging clothes, then it's like, oh my gosh, there's so much love to do. But just do the easiest load last. towels are so easy. We have cloth napkins. We use cloth napkins. And so our last load is bat towels and then

cloth napkins. And it's just a whole mess of squares that I just fold and fold the same way, make one pile, put them away and they're done. So that is the final tiny change that can make a difference. And that last whole section of like the order of your loads matters. So if you can sort based on the order, don't base don't sort based on color based on on type in the order of loads and then do your loads in that order you are not going to hate laundry as much as you used to i promise you because i'm telling you laundry is my nightmare i can't stand it i like you would have baskets just filled with clothes all the time just sitting on all the surfaces and would never put it away because getting the momentum to do it is so hard they're doing it this way really how

helps doing it all on one day if you can and doing it in this specific order. This is an order that's guaranteed to help you win because in the beginning of your day, you've got more momentum, you've got more motivation, you've got more energy. You're like, I'm going to put in my laundry playlist and I'm going to go for it. You know, like this is a great time to just listen to podcast all day because you're just going to do laundry if you're able to do that. It's so fantastic. One final tip. If you get really, and this is actually the lazy genius tip of the week, and it's really more of just like a, hey guys, put your laundry away. If you have such a hard time getting the clothes out of the basket into their drawers,

when you finish folding clothes, don't put them back in a basket. Don't do it. Just set that as a rule for yourself. My clothes, my folded clothes, my clean clothes, do not go back in the laundry basket. They're not allowed. Don't stack everything up. I don't care how efficient your stacks are. I don't care if you're like, well, the bottom is this room.

And then I'm going to do this room. I don't care how strategic it is. Don't put them in the basket. Because once they go in the basket, they do not come out again. They do not come out again. until you're like, oh, I'm out of clothes, or I need my basket. I guess I should put these things away, like four days later, right? Don't put your clean clothes in a basket.

Get your butt up wherever you are. Walk and put them away. And again, if you do the loads and the order that I have shared with you today, and this, you know, obviously if you do it different than this, like props, man, do your thing. I'm just saying, for those of you who hate laundry, this is a winning formula, I promise. So if you're putting things away based on the order. order of loads and the clothes that you're washing together, the putting away, putting away of clothes is not as stressful because really you're just putting away two or three things at

once. And then you're done until the next load. Okay? You're spreading out the pudding away, making it more efficient and more like sanity saving for yourself, which is what we all want when it comes to laundry. So I hope this helps. I hope there's just even one thing that you're like, oh, that's going to change things for me.

That's so helpful. So if you want to get any of the things that I mentioned, I've got some resources that's sort of gathered for you on the show notes today. The lazy genius collective.com slash lazy slash laundry. There are a few things that you can check out that might help you as well. Some tips, a couple of books that I've read, like kind of like housekeeping books that might be helpful for you. You can go there and get all of those resources, including a link to those Turkish towels that I adore with all my heart. Okay, guys, I'm so glad that you were with me today. Thank you so much for listening. If you do not subscribe to this podcast, I would love for you to go to iTunes and subscribe.

That way, it immediately goes, the new episodes immediately go into your phone. They're ready for you when you are ready for them. You don't miss anything because that would be super sad if you missed into these episodes because I love it when you listen. I love it when you get on Instagram. I'm at The Lazy Genius and you tell me how things are going. that you send me emails. You can email me at Kendra at the lazy genius collective.com. I just absolutely love hearing from you. It is so fun to see your pictures of the sauce that you're

making and the gifts that you're buying and that you're feeling more sane as a mother because you have a new baby and you don't feel so crazy. Like all of those things just, it's why I do this. I love it so very much. So keep them coming. And so you don't miss an episode. Go to iTunes and subscribe. Okay, guys. Thank you so much for listening. Remember, be a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't. I will see you next time. Have you ever felt like you were living just a B or B plus life? It's so dangerous to live that.

More dangerous than a B minus or a C plus life? Because when you're living a B or B plus life, you don't change it. You think it's good enough. Is it? I'm Susie Welch. I host a podcast called Becoming You. People think, okay, an A plus life is not available to me, but there is a way. We are all in the process of becoming ourselves.

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