Friday, June 25, 2010

Miraculous Laundry

Yesterday was laundry day.  Don't get me wrong, I can think of a whole list of things I'd rather do than laundry, bu there is something a little miraculous and gratifying to me about doing laundry. 
I take clothes that are so filthy, I'm sure they'll never look clean again, and then after stain-treating and washing them, they look clean...usually...sometimes nothing can help them. 

I generally end up collecting all the laundry from two weeks or so and doing it all back-to-back on one day...usually four loads.  I guess this habit is left over from apartment living when we had to go to the laundry room to do laundry.  I like to keep different pieces of matching outfits washed at the same time and since they often go in different loads, that means washing everything on the same day. 

I sort through the clothes to put them in dark/light/white/jeans piles and look for things that need to be stain-treated and smear on some Spray and Wash Stick (or a generic equivalent)....a trick from my mom.  The clothes that are really dirty, go in the washing machine first with some hot water and Oxi-Clean (a trick from Hubby's mom) to soak.  Then I rub out the stains as much as I can.  Then the rest of the load goes in and gets washed with a little more oxi-clean and detergent.

And there's something fulfilling about having this:
(less than half the laundry by the way)

Turn into this:
This is far less than half the laundry, but it is the stack of most of the clothes that I've sewn for the kids over the last year.  Something else I like about doing laundry is seeing all these fun clothes, personalized clothes that the kids have gotten filthy having fun playing in...and seeing them come clean...or not.  If they don't...they were cheap.

And for my mom, I took this:
And turned it into this too:
What laundry tips do you have?  Do you have miraculous laundry at your house?  What do you love and hate about laundry?

6 comments:

  1. We do one load every other day or so. Our washer and dryer are small so a "large" load is about half a basket. Laundry is one chore I really don't mind doing. But I have to fold it right a way.Right now I am doing extra laundry, just washed all our cloth diapers, washing all the new stuff for baby and such. We use Costco laundry sop and it works well.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hooray for stacks of beautiful clean clothes, especially when you made most of them yourself! Clever, clever mama. Love the basket of clean socks all matched up. :)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the laundry tips! I do not enjoy laundry at all in fact I sometimes bribe my husband to help, doesn't always work. I am excited about letting the dirty clothes soak then scrub. Never thought of that, but then again I don't regularly sit around thinking about laundry! LOL~!

    ReplyDelete
  4. My laundry habits happen to be quite different than yours, actually. There are 4 of us in the house and we all have our own hampers. When someones hamper gets full or when one of us is nearing the end of their unmentionables I throw the whole hamper in the wash with cold water. The entire load then goes in the dryer or on the line. Then the load gets folded, put back in the hamper and sent back to the room it came from. My BIG laundry day is when I tackle the bedding
    :( blah!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I put the washer on before bed, which is late because I am up sewing or something, then in the morning, which is bright and early, throw the dryer on. This is daily, and then I fold and put away at the begining of nap time. I actual sat and figured it out that I get about 2-3 hours of sleep at nigth and some days 1-2 at nap time. But thats the life of a single mom with three kids under 3 (no twins).

    ReplyDelete
  6. My laundry tips are this: Use shampoo on grass stains, hairspray on ink stains,and this amazing stuff called quik n' brite on anything. I have some pics of this here: http://gatesofamily.blogspot.com/2008/07/amazing-product.html Oh and dawn dishsoap is a heaven sent on grease stains. Especially if a chapstick goes through the wash. With any of these I just apply to the stain and then scrub with a scrubbing brush or old tooth brush, then wash like normal.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to comment. I love hearing from you. I also love responding, so please make sure your Blogger account is set up for me to be able to see your email address or include your email address. I've had to stop accepting anonymous comments due to spam. If you don't have any other way to comment, you can always send an email.