VOLUME 1 / ISSUE 1 WINTER 2024
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BY CHELSEA HARRISON LAUNDRY AND THE GENIUS OF BATCHING
With four kids, the laundry battle at our house is a NeverEnding Story (cue synth 80s theme song). However, I recently read a book called The Lazy Genius by Kendra Adachi (tied to her Lazy Genius podcast) which gave me some helpful hints about getting this task under control. There is so much wisdom to be had in this book, but I want to focus on Lazy Genius Principle #9: Batching.
Adachi describes batching as finding tasks you repeat and doing them all at the same time. Here are a few tips on batching your laundry:
1. Sort & wash clothes by where they end up , not by lights and darks. Modern fabrics are generally safe to wash together (besides the obvious exceptions like a new red sweater and your best white towels), so make the next steps of the laundry process easier by setting yourself up for success. Do whatever makes sense to you, but this might look like batching towels together, batching each child’s laundry separately per bedroom, or batching adult laundry together. 2. Folding - According to Adachi, batching as you fold looks like this- fold like items together to help you get into a rhythm. For example, pull all the towels out to fold first and get those out of the way, then move onto pants, then shirts, etc. The idea here is that the task will go faster as you lean into the repetitiveness of the motion. My favorite trick in this category is leaving all the socks in a pile until the end which makes matching easier when they’re all together. Bonus Tip: Have the kids match the socks, tell them it’s a game, they’ll love it!
3. Putting The Laundry Away: Adachi suggests to capitalizing on your hard work in the moment and putting the laundry away, before another task pulls your attention away. She also notes that when it is “Laundry Day” in her house, that is the only chore she focuses on, so that chore is not interrupted by a million others. My favorite tip in this category is to batch the putting away step by making other people do it. When my kids hit about 6/7 years old, it becomes their responsibility to put their clothes away, so all I have to do is show them where the piles are or leave their “batched” pile on their dresser. Are their drawers helter-skelter and a lot of clothes end up on the closet floor? Maybe, sometimes, but is it worth the time it would take me or my husband to do it every time? Definitely. Now that you can save so much time by streamlining the laundry, you’ll have time to check out Adachi’s book for other cool tips like: Deciding Once, Asking the Magic Question, and Essentializing. Happy reading…and folding!
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