One basket to rule them all

The Tip: Do basket-centric laundry. Only do a load of laundry when you have enough clothes to fill a basket, and make sure that basket stays with that load the whole time it cycles through the laundry system.

The Reason:
Early in our marriage, Ian and I split up the list of chores around the house according to who liked to do what. I liked handling money, he liked to cook. I liked to iron, he liked to mow the lawn. Easy split. The laundry, on the other hand, was another problem entirely.

In the first place, we had different styles of laundry management. When I was single, I did laundry based on the underwear schedule–you know, once you run out of underwear, then you do all the wash. I had about three weeks worth of underwear. I also would rewear clothing without washing it. If I came home and what I was wearing showed no visible dirt from been having worn, I would just hang it back up in the closet.

Ian, on the other hand, uses a method that makes no sense. Underwear schedule? Never heard of it. He does the laundry when the hamper gets full. He wears something once, in the hamper it goes at the end of the day. Throw in the toddler in the mix, and the hamper would fill up within hours.

So we decided to split laundry duties according to our strengths: Ian would move the laundry from the washer to dryer (a chore because the washer is in the kitchen and the dryer is out in the garage). I would fold, then he would put the clothes away. And then once a week, I would iron.

And that worked well for about a month. Then the system broke down. And what really happened was that Ian would do a load every other day and I would fold once a week. You can imagine what happened next: a hideous mountain of unfolded laundry that lived in the corner. The mountain would loom menacingly, reminding me of my inadequacies, and seemed to be breeding and multiplying whenever we’d leave the room. As a result, we’d never have folded, ironed or organized clothes.

Until one day, after several years of the laundry pile never going away, I turned to Ian and said, in complete seriousness: “This laundry is breaking my heart.”.

I just couldn’t keep up with him feeding the beast. “I’m doing all the laundry,” I announced. “I just can’t take it any more.” I had the feeling that if I could control it, then it would get better.

Of course, that lasted for about a month. We’re just too busy and there are too many damn clothes! Plus Ian wouldn’t always stay away from the cycle. Sometimes the kid would create a laundry emergency, and he’d have to throw clothes in the wash immediately. Then he’d forget. Then five days later, I’d come to the washer and there’d be that smell of old laundry that had never made it to the dryer. Or I’d think I could quickly dash a load of wet clothes to the dryer, only to find a pile of dry clothes that I’d forgotten about. With one basket, it would always mean an awkward dance between moving the dry clothes to the dryer door, throwing the wet clothes in OVER them, then gathering all the dry clothes into the basket. Complete and utter chaos.

Then I hit upon a solution: the one basket rule. With this implementation, Ian and I can both do laundry. The one basket rule does this:
- an empty basket signals that there’s a load in the washer or dryer
- there’s always a basket ready to transport the goods
- no one can start a new load of laundry unless there’s an empty basket, which is motivation to put things away
- no more mountain of laundry