Lazy Geniusing Laundry

First of all, if you don't listen to The Lazy Genius podcast, and have any responsibility for household tasks, small children, or using a stove, go subscribe now. It's one of my favourites and I regularly feel proud of my own "lazy genius"-esque household hacks. I will never be a culinary artist, professional cleaner, or heavenly hostess by any standard. What The Lazy Genius, Kendra Adachi, teaches us is that we can do better without stressing all the time. She is also a great weekly inspiration on Instagram for things like meal planning, finding routines in the various seasons of life, and generally feeling okay about yourself. 

Now, to my own laundry hack that makes me feel like I've mastered one aspect of life. 4 laundry baskets. You heard it here first, all you need are a lot of laundry baskets. 

As a bridal shower gift, we received one of those wheelie laundry sorters that you can use as a hamper. I have never wanted to be a throw all the laundry on the laundry room floor person (although if that's you, no judgement as long as you're happy!), so I appreciated having the laundry sorted right in our own bedroom closet. However, by the time those baskets were full, it was extremely heavy and the bags would eventually start to rip. Smaller loads could have been considered, yes, but it just didn't fit with our life. Also, if we carried the laundry down in the special bag, and then life got in the way of putting things away right away, we'd be left with no place to put our cold colours. 

With the demise of our second wheelie sorter...enter 4 laundry baskets. We bought 4 matching baskets at Ikea, but any baskets will do. We have them on the floor of our closet in a line, and it is the perfect system for us. We typically have 3 loads of laundry that we separate and the 4th bin is there to keep the system going even while we have a basket downstairs with laundry spinning. The baskets are Cold Colours, Cold Whites, & Warm Whites. I don't know if we need to do this much sorting, but it makes for about the right sized loads each week and works for us. Do you sort your laundry? I recently learned that my mom doesn't really sort laundry and at some point I may graduate to that level of lazy genius as well. 

Below is the laundry basket that we selected (click for link to Ikea website for this beauty of a $9 laundry basket). Apparently we break a lot of laundry equipment, because our two previous laundry baskets both had broken handles. We chose this laundry basket because it is 1 piece, so the handle is less likely to separate from the basket portion. Also, it's a happy colour and doesn't have holes so nothing's falling out. I'm really questioning my load sizes right now based on the fact that our wheelie sorters and laundry baskets have broken multiple times. Add that to my laundry method, huge loads so you hardly ever have to do laundry. 

One question that I have for those of you at a different stage of life than we are, is how can we keep this going with kids? I can see how this is a perfect system for us because we keep all of our laundry in one room. What I'm imagining is that they'll have a hamper and every time I throw in one of our loads I would grab their hamper and sort it into our baskets. Would that work?

When it comes to laundry, I keep things very simple. I throw in the load of laundry with a Tide pod and a scoop of OxiClean and walk away. Our cold colours & cold whites go in the dryer on delicate, I hang zero items. Warm whites go on a regular dryer cycle as we don't worry about shrinking. Warm whites used to be hot whites but I recently read an article that warm is good enough and saves energy so I made the change. Laundry is one of my favourite chores because there is a machine that does it for you. I also don't iron. I sound a bit like a slob. I do have a steam drier if an item is in desperate need, but for the most part we get by with the occasional wrinkle. 

I'm not even precious when it comes to folding. The ever elusive fitted sheet? I roughly fold or roll it in my arms and shove it in the matching pillow case with the flat sheet and other pillow case. It is only right now that I'm realizing how lazy I am about laundry. Maybe someday I'll be a bit more particular, but I actually do like my system. I'm not the greatest at cleaning, but this is easy for me to maintain and we always have clean underwear. Share your best laundry tips with me. What can I do to be even lazier? One thing I'm definitely going to introduce asap is a container for the OxiClean so that this picture could have been more palatable. Happy Tuesday! Go do a load of laundry!