Two loads a day
Laundry just has to be done!
When I write about laundry, I have in mind big families. As with everything here at the SFH, the best thing is for you to take what I’m saying — ideas that come from my experience raising seven children — and apply them to your situation with confidence.
When I realized I just had to accept the laundry as not so much a continually surprising burden, unforeseen, unjust, terrible, but more as actually one of my main jobs that I should probably just schedule into my daily life, I reconciled myself to it.
It helped me to count on doing at least two loads a day, with one day a week planned for a more focused effort to get all the sheets and towels through the pipeline — maybe four loads on that day. (Remember, the children can help! But it is our responsibility.) By evening, both loads should be dry. During the day, fold the two loads from the day before. In a big family, there will always be baskets of laundry somewhere in transit, and that’s okay.
Saint-Malo, Brittany: women washing clothes in barrels, carrying washing in baskets and hanging items from windows. Etching by L. Lhermitte, 1881.
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It’s only my husband and I but I still maintain a laundry schedule. The big laundry job, and nastiest, is my husband’s two large loads of work laundry. I do this job on the weekend with special additives for cleaning and sanitizing. He works on the big trucks that clean out the city sewer system. It’s a yucky job. It’s a yucky job to do the laundry.
Bedding is laundered once a week. Towels are laundered once a week.
Thank you for reminding me I can best the mess, particularly the push to accept laundry as a fact of life. My attitude toward it has made a straightforward chore sifnificantly more difficult than needed. I'm also appreciative of the wisdom in the comments. My hope is renewed!