Episode 08: Laundry Hacks: Simple Chore Solutions for Busy, Working Moms
ITUNES | SPOTIFY
Are you tired of the laundry piling up? Of the soccer socks or the dance leotard never being clean when you need them? Learn how to create a routine that puts laundry, or any other mundane chore, on autopilot so it's not something you even have to think about. Because for most of us, laundry will always be something we have to do. But that doesn't mean it has to be frustrating. Tune in for some practical tips, encouragement, and a fresh perspective on the "mundane" tasks of life.
In this episode, you’ll learn…
00:19 Personal update: piano lessons
03:00 Why laundry matters
05:12 The mental load of laundry
11:44 Breaking down the laundry process
20:05 Ideas for involving kids in household chores like laundry
links & resources mentioned in this episode:
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You are listening to the Life Coach for Working Moms podcast, the show where we are talking about what it actually takes to make life work as a working mom. I'm your host, Katelyn Denning, a full time working mom of three and a certified life and executive coach. I'm so glad you're here and I hope you enjoy this week's episode.
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. How are you this week? One, I'm hot. I'm recording this during the week when we have this massive heat wave where I am in the Midwest. But, other than that, I'm doing okay. I had a fun evening last night. My daughter, my middle child, started piano lessons for the first time.
So my 10 year old, my oldest, has been taking piano for, I think this is his third year. And if you don't know, I am a pianist. I'm a musician. I actually went to college for music. My parents, both of them are retired music teachers. So music and piano and singing are, and always have been a huge part of my life.
And so to see my kids taking lessons is a very satisfying full circle moment for me when I was growing up. The sort of rule of thumb in our house was second grade. That was when you started piano. And even though my mom could have taught lessons for both me and my sister, she decided to take us outside the home to a piano teacher, someone else she thought we might learn better from a third party, someone who was not our mom.
And I think she was probably right. And so I've decided to do the same thing for my kids. Again, I could. teach them at least the basics, but, it's nice to have someone else take on that responsibility and for my kids to build that relationship with someone else. And so, you never know when your kid starts something new, how it's going to go, if they're going to enjoy it, is she going to take to it?
Is she going to resist it? Is she going to want to practice or not? And She came sort of not quite skipping, but she had a little bounce to her step as she was walking out of her first lesson last night and said, I really like piano. I'm really going to like this. And so, oh, that made me so happy. We will see where it goes.
Of course, been probably a little bit spoiled with my oldest. He is very self driven and just sits down to practice all of the time. I never have to remind him. And I know that's, I'm so very fortunate in that way. And so we'll see how things go, but anyway, it's so fun to, hear music in the home. And if any of you have been with kids who are learning an instrument for the first time, you know, that sometimes it doesn't always sound great.
So we will be listening to that, but that's okay. I know where it's headed and ultimately it will be a good thing, but anyway, that's what's new in my world this week. And for today's episode, this is not the topic that I thought I was going to bring to the podcast this week, but I had two client sessions this week on this topic and I thought, you know, Bye.
Bye. They can't be the only ones who are struggling with this, who have questions and want to make this easier. So here we are. And the topic is laundry. I know, right? Laundry. Ugh. Who wants to talk about laundry? And so when, I'm chuckling because when I say anything is fair game for you to bring to a coaching session, I mean everything.
Even your laundry, your dirty laundry in this case. And I think what's so interesting about the clients that I coached this week on this topic is that both of these working moms had, at one time, a laundry routine that did seem to work really well. And I think it's probably, in this case, the shift in schedules and the season as we head back to school.
But Maybe this happens for you, too. You have a part of your life that's working really well, feels like a well oiled machine, something comes up, you get sick, you travel, you have vacation, schedules change, and it sort of all falls apart, and you're left standing in the middle of, in this case, a pile of dirty laundry, thinking, how do I get back on track?
Where did it go wrong? How do I get started again? Or on the flip side, I coach Many working moms in my planning intensive, which is just a 90 minute strategy session where we troubleshoot one to two areas of your life that aren't working, many of them bring laundry or these other sort of daily weekly chores like meal planning or bedtime routines.
And they've never had a good system in place, and so we are building from scratch and really experimenting. But wherever you are, it's a good opportunity to take something off of your mental plate, so to speak. And when I think about, why would someone use a coaching session on something so, I mean, let's say it mundane as laundry, it's because it's not actually about the laundry, or it's not just about the laundry, just like it's not just about the to do list or the inbox or the meal plan.
It's about the mental space that those things take up. It's about how it feels to every day have something that's not getting done. To have something that's hanging over your head. And it's about how you feel, when you have that thing that's piling up. And how you show up then. And interact with all of the other parts of your life.
How you show up when you know that there's a mountain of laundry at home that you just can't seem to get through. So, yes, my clients bring things like laundry and inbox management and morning routines and bedtime routines and planning to our coaching sessions. But they bring a lot more than that, too.
Because they know that those bigger things, like going for a promotion, they know that Or, thinking about making a career pivot, reconnecting with rekindling their marriage, starting up a new hobby or activity, or resting more. Those bigger things will be so much easier to tackle. You'll have the capacity to tackle them when you're not worried about whether or not your kid's soccer jersey is clean or wondering when you're going to get to the laundry.
Now, I hate to break it to you, but you will always have laundry to do. Ugh, I know, I know, but you will. Laundry will probably always be a part of your life. Unless, of course, you come into some money, you win the lottery, you're able to completely outsource it, or buy new clothes all of the time, then maybe you won't ever have to think about it.
But even in the scenarios where, I mean, I have known some women to, use a laundry service, right? They don't do laundry anymore. They outsource it to a laundry service, or they have a nanny or a house manager who takes care of that. There's still a piece, though, of organizing it, of collecting the laundry and getting it to the laundry service, or maybe the house manager washes, dries, and folds it, and you put it away, right?
So unless you're able to truly outsource all pieces of it, laundry will always be a part of your life. Do you want to fight that reality? Do you want to resist it? Do you want to be frustrated day after day, week after week, that not only do you have to do it, but that it continues to pile up? Or do you want to find a way to exist with it, to just get it done in the easiest way possible without the drama?
So often I think when we want to change our perspective or how we feel about something, we go from one extreme to the next. So in the case of laundry, maybe. If you hate it right now, and that doesn't feel good, like, is laundry really worth all of that feeling, all of that emotion? No. But the opposite of hate is to love.
And to love laundry is probably a bit of a stretch. Now maybe some of you do love laundry. Amazing. I love that you love laundry. But we skip over what's in between love and hate, which is neutral. What about neutral. If hating the laundry creates a lot of friction in your life or drains your energy because you're resisting what is, but loving it feels like a stretch, wouldn't it feel better to just be neutral?
Isn't that better than hating it? It's just a thing I do. It's just a part of my life. So maybe you're thinking, okay, I can get on board with neutral. Yeah, I'm not going to love it, but you're right. Hating something, resisting something, being frustrated with it, it is draining. I'm tired of feeling that way, so let me move into neutral.
How do I get into neutral? I think the fastest way to get into neutral is to remind yourself that laundry is a choice. Any of these daily, weekly, mundane chores, if you will, are a choice. Meal planning, maintaining your inbox. You don't have to do those things. Just like you don't have to do laundry.
We think we have to. We think there is no choice in it, but you could, buy new clothes all of the time instead of washing the ones you have. I hate that for the earth, but just to poke holes in this argument that you have to do laundry, you could outsource it completely. You could wear dirty clothes.
I know, but you could, what is it? You turn it inside out, frontwards, backwards, but you know what I mean? It could be that way for you, but you're cringing at that right now, because you're like, no, of course I have to wear clean clothes. But that is your choice. You choose to wear what you already own and wash it and use your money on other things.
So if it is a choice. If you step into that choice, own it, how can you make it easy then? How can you make it easier? How can you get out from underneath the cloud of laundry? Or insert whatever, , chore is that is your Achilles heel. How do you get either back to if your routine or process has sort of fallen apart or create one that just makes laundry this neutral part of your experience?
It's just something that you do and you don't feel one way or the other about it. Now the first question I always ask any client that comes to me with the laundry dilemma, the laundry confusion, is to ask, where is the breakdown happening? There are several stages to the laundry process. I'm going to go through what I think they are.
Maybe yours are slightly different. Maybe there's a step in my process that you don't do, but you get the gist. So the stages of laundry are of course, getting the dirty clothes from wherever they are, the pile in the bathroom, the hamper in your closet, the basket in the basement, who knows, getting the dirty clothes from where they are into the washer.
Then moving clothes from the washer to the dryer or to hanging up or laying flat, wherever you are, whatever your options are, then getting those clean and dry clothes folded or sorted in some way. And lastly, put away back to the dresser, back to the shelf, back to the closet or the armoire. There's always one step in there that is breaking down, that is causing the rest of the system To fail.
What is that for you? For me, a couple of years ago, as I was figuring out my laundry routine with three kids, that was a transition from one to two, then two to three,
for me. It was getting the clothes into the washer early enough in the day that then I would have time to do my whole drying routine, which is My friends know and kind of joke with me about, but it's a whole thing for me. There are certain clothes that I like to hang. Others that do go through the dryer.
Some that get to lay flat, but they have to go in the dryer for five or ten minutes to tumble first. Whatever. All right. It's a little high maintenance. I own it. It's my choice. I need time. I can't be doing that at 10 o'clock at night. I'm tired. I'm ready for bed. At that point, I'd rather do it in the late afternoon or the early evening, around the dinnertime hour.
But I need the clothes to be through the wash cycle and ready for that stage. And so for me, I could never remember to get a load started soon enough, and by the time I would start it, it'd be six o'clock and right then it's too late. So that for me was where it was breaking down. What I ended up doing, and this is actually one of my favorite hacks that I teach inside my group program, plenty of time, we do a whole, module on supportive systems and routines.
I use the delay start button on my washing machine. Now it's a. That's about a five year old machine, so it's newer. I know if you have an older machine you may not have that option, but if you do, check. I could then, when I was thinking about it in the late evening, put the clothes, the dirty clothes, into the washer and set a delay start to start washing the clothes at 5 a.
m. The load would be finished washing at six when I came down and I could either move it to the dryer then or at some point during the morning or the afternoon, didn't really matter to me, but I got the clothes washed, which was the hardest part for me. And then the rest happened. And then what I found was since I was already down there doing my whole dryer song and dance, I could bring the next dirty load down and set it to delay start to run the next morning.
All right, so it was about finding the breakdown for me. Another client of mine, her breakdown was happening in the putting away stage. So she was good at getting the clothes into the washer and actually really great at remembering to put them into the dryer, but then she put them in the basket and they'd never get folded and her clean baskets would pile up and soon everyone was just getting clean clothes out of the laundry room.
Which I've gone through seasons in my life too where I've done that. It's not a problem. Like whatever. Yes, Henry, I washed your clothes, but they're downstairs. Just go find a shirt from the dryer. But she wanted them put away. So her breakdown was in the put away stage. And so what we realized is going from her basement laundry area to the bedroom, that's far away from each other.
And so as soon as she pulled the clothes out of the dryer, her goal was to get the clean basket. Up to the bedroom, where the clothes would ultimately be put away. Then, when she was upstairs already in the bedroom for bath time for the kids, or her own bedtime routine, she could fold a few clothes and put them away.
It made it so much easier to get them put away when the clean clothes were already in the room where they were going to ultimately go. I think of this solution process of like, how can I put that step in the process somewhere or do something that will make me almost trip over it? Now, maybe you're not actually tripping over the clothes, but bring it top of mind, put it somewhere, or the alarm, or the reminder, whatever you need.
Do it at a time of day where it just is so obvious that that's the next thing you need to do. So once you know where the breakdown is happening. and you can troubleshoot that step. Next, I have all of my clients think about what does success look like laundry, it's this huge, never ending thing, but really what are we talking about?
Give me some data, give me some facts. How many loads do you need or want to do each week? Are we talking one load per person in your household every week? Do you want to do your bedding every week, every other week? What about your towels? Is it multiple loads because you don't have enough clothes to last you for the whole week?
What are we talking about? What are the numbers? I recently coached one of these clients in the last week that I've been talking about and she decided, you know, one load per person per week. There's four people in her family, two kids, two adults, and then sheets and towels every other week. Great. All right.
Now we know what we're talking about. Four loads, five loads, maybe six, depending on how many sheets and towels, right? So between four and six loads a week, whether it's a towel week and a sheet week or not. But then she said, well, what I'm really worried about though, with that is what about like sports gear and uniforms?
What if, my son needs his Jersey on Wednesday, but I wasn't going to do his laundry until Thursday? Well, then what do I do? Okay, that's so good to know, right? Now we can troubleshoot for that. And what we landed on was Creating this new reminder for the kids that whenever they come home from a practice or a game and get changed or take their shower, immediately take off the Jersey or in my house, the soccer socks and get them into the laundry room.
In my house. I don't care if you throw them on the floor, put them right into the washer. If it's empty in front of the washer, get them near the laundry room and then whatever load is next. include those items. So if you're washing, your clothes tonight, yeah, throw in the soccer socks. Who cares?
At least they're clean. We have to think about what success looks like and then solve for those little variables. And then suddenly she thought, wow, this is totally doable for loads a week. Awesome. And then the soccer stuff or the sports stuff is just getting done with whatever load is next. Easy. From there, I like to ask, which camp are you in?
Do you like to spread out your laundry? Do a load a day or , a load every workday? Or do you like to batch it? Do you like to do it all on Mondays or do you like to do it all over the weekend? There's no right or wrong. I've gone, I think I've tried both ways. But there's really no right or wrong way.
You can change. You can experiment, test it out, see if you're a one load a day kind of person. If you hate that, it feels like laundry is never ending and you never get a break. Great. Try batching it. Just choose. And do you like a schedule? Are your clothes washed every Monday, your daughter's clothes every Tuesday, your son's clothes every Wednesday, or do you just want it to be flexible?
Whoever's hamper is the most full, that's the next load that goes in.
And then I think one of the other important things to consider, whether it's laundry or any of these household chores, maintenance tasks that we do day in, day out, is to involve your kids. Now I know some of you may have just a baby at home. They're too young to help. And I want to explain a little bit more about what I mean so you can be thinking about developing this practice for yourself.
If you have older kids, mine are five, seven, and ten, absolutely teach them how to do laundry. This is a life skill. They are also going to have for the rest of their lives, just like we are. If they are older, maybe have them help fold and put away their clothes, at the very least put them away. When they're young, maybe they can help sort.
My kids love, even my youngest, when they were really young, love pulling out all the socks into a pile, or all of their shirts into a pile. And then I go through and follow and fold. At the very least though, don't hide this chore away. Don't hide any of these chores away. I don't need to do laundry in my alone time.
My alone time is for things that can't be interrupted. Things that I want to focus on and really get through. Laundry? I don't care if you interrupt me. You'll probably interrupt me listening to an audiobook, let's be honest. If I sneak away to the laundry room, I've got my earbuds in, or I've got my phone on speaker, and I'm listening to an audiobook, but I will pause that.
Not a problem. I can always get back to laundry, I know right where I left off, I can pick it back up, I can hit play on my audiobook again, but I want my kids to see what it takes to get clean clothes each week. I want them to see that this is a part of maintaining a household and everyone helps.
Everyone helps. Now, I will certainly move a load from the washer to the dryer in the middle of my workday because I work from home and that's a two, three minute thing for me. But nothing more. My childcare hours, my working hours are for work and for me.
Now, I do have some clients who love to fold laundry after the kids go to bed. I'm thinking of one client in particular who loves to sit down in front of a show with her husband and together they fold and tackle, any of those clean clothes together. And that's fine too. Do your kids see that?
No. But what I love about that is it takes into account the value of your time. Again, doing laundry during peak productivity hours or when you have energy or the capacity to focus is probably not the highest and best use of your time. Doing laundry that doesn't take a lot of mental energy or focus while you're doing your work Zoned out watching a show in the evening, or, while you're sitting on the floor and your kids are playing, that's fine.
That's great, actually. So it's about thinking not just whether you want to be interrupted or not, but also when's the best time for you to fit something like laundry into your day and your week. So making laundry, making all of these, any of these mundane daily or weekly chores easier, putting them on autopilot, having a process, right?
I do four loads of laundry a week or six loads, or I do it every day or I batch it on the weekend. Having a process like that as a standard operating procedure, if you will, an SOP for how laundry gets done in your house. Removes those questions of when, how, will I ever get the laundry done, and it creates more mental space.
It's no longer something that you have to feel bad about because you don't have clean clothes or frustrated with yourself over because it's not getting done. You don't have to feel guilty when somebody doesn't have the clean clothes that they need. You can and should put something like laundry on autopilot so that you can focus on the bigger, more important, the more fun, joyful things in your life.
Laundry is not worth your stress, frustration, or really your thoughts. Don't let it take up so much space, slide it into neutral, slide it into neutral and accept that it's here. It's a part of life and it's your choice and you can just feel neutral about it.
If you're ready to stop letting the regular chores of life, like laundry, take up so much space and time in your life, let's work together. Let's work together to figure out what's not working. And then create a plan to make it all easier. So you have the capacity for the bigger, more important things in life.
This is the work that I do with my coaching clients every week from laundry and meal planning and beyond to creating a life that they actually love. I would encourage you to fill out a short application, super quick and easy, to learn more about potentially working together. You can do that on my website at themothernurture.
com forward slash application. All right, go get that laundry done and I will talk to you in the next episode. Take care.
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