Tackling Laundry in Your Home
By Susan Layden
This is the first in a Five part series on the common problem of organizing laundry in your home:
A reoccurring problem I see in many homes in which I work is laundry. That is, piles of laundry. I see those piles not just in the laundry area, but on bedroom and closet floors, couches, tables – you name an area in the home and with different folks I have seen laundry piles in many places. The question is – are the piles clean clothes or dirty? Are they there because they need to be sorted, folded and put away? Or is there such an abundance of clothing that there is not room to even put them away? Are things that need to be ironed mixed in with things that simply need to be put away? What is going on here?
What I do know is that they create a lot of clutter and chaos in people’s homes. So, I have to do a bit of questioning and find out why people have these laundry piles. Most frequently, I have found that the piles are usually clean, at least the ones out of the bedroom area. The clothes have made it into the washer and the dryer but have not been folded or hung up and put away. That is where it all breaks down. While most of the clothes may be clean sometimes others in the home have thrown a few dirty clothes on one of the piles. There is no good way of being certain what is what and the home simply looks messy and disorganized. Sometimes you can’t find a seat to watch t.v. and so piles get taller or they land on the floor somewhere.
Why does this happen? I believe there are a few reasons for this common occurrence. I think the main reason is that there is a lack of time and task management in the home. Secondarily, people don’t have a clear useable system to complete the whole process and finally, there is often an overabundance of clothing and/or a lack of storage, making putting it away a much more difficult task. Let’s examine each of these. Do any of them hit home with you?