When it comes to simplifying my laundry routine, one load a day keeps Laundry Mountain away. Laundry is such an integral chore and a part of our role as moms. It can feel endless and overwhelming. But it doesn’t have to be! If we can really simplify core areas of our lives (like laundry!), it will make everything so much easier. Simplification should never be over-complicated. So, laundry shouldn’t be either!
In This Episode, Allie Discusses:
How minimalism in your wardrobe will make your laundry routine simpler, but that doesn’t mean your closet is full of clothes you don’t love.
What her laundry routine looks like + how she got to this simplified routine.
Why she chooses to do one load a day versus having a set “laundry day.”
Mentioned in this Episode:
Mom life. We are surrounded with the message that it’s the tired life. The no-time-for-myself life. The hard life. And while it is hard and full of lots of servitude, the idea that motherhood means a joyless life is something I am passionate about putting a stop to. I’m on a mission to help you stop counting down the minutes till bedtime, at least most days. I want you to stop cleaning up after your kid’s childhood and start being present for it. Start enjoying it. I believe in John 10:10 “that we are called to abundant life” and i know mothers are not excluded from that promise. Join me in conversations about simplicity, minimalism and lots of other good stuff that leads to a life of less for the sake of enjoying more in your motherhood. I’m Allie Casazza and this is the The Purpose Show.
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Hey sweet friends! Welcome back to another episode of The Purpose Show! This is episode 28 and I am talking about a simplified laundry routine.
I have been practicing what I am going to share with you today for months and months. It has been working well. So well that I haven’t felt the need to change anything up, fall off the wagon, regroup, or anything like that. A lot of the times when you try to create a new routine, that happens. You think something is going to work really well for you but then you start to actually live it out and it just doesn’t work.
This has not happened with this particular routine. With the laundry being such an integral chore and a part of our role as moms, I think this is really valuable and worth sharing. This is what worked really well for me and I wanted to share it. Because when you find something that works, you should share it, right?
First, before we get into the routine, I just want to say again that minimalism when it comes to the clothes in your routine is Step 1 when it comes to simplifying your life, simplifying your laundry routine, and making your role a whole lot lighter. I have shared before in a previous podcast episode, emails, and on my blog, that I do not have a capsule wardrobe for myself, per se. Apparently, a capsule wardrobe is 30 items or less and it follows a bunch of guidelines that just don’t work for me. I tried it for about a year and it just didn’t float my boat.
I don’t have a crazy amount of clothes, but I have what I love, what I need. I have options. I feel very set free in my wardrobe. I am not following a bunch of rules that were decided on for me.
For my kids, it is pretty much the same thing. They don’t have a ton of stuff. They definitely have extras so I don’t have so little that if I get sick, fall behind on the laundry for some reason, or life happens, that I am screwed. There is plenty.
Everyone has what they need. I am not really focused at all on the numbers of items in everyone’s closet.
I would say Brian probably has the smallest wardrobe. He is a guy. He doesn’t really care. He is super basic. That works for him.
Whenever someone asks me how many pieces of clothing someone has, I can tell you what I think is a good minimalist starting point, but I don’t know what we have. It ebbs and flows as the kids grow, as they outgrow certain things, as we add more to their wardrobe. I am not obsessed with the number side of things and I don’t think that you should be either. I don’t really talk about that.
I do think that making sure what you have in your wardrobe and what your family has in their wardrobe should be serving you and them. Everything should be in good condition, no stains or rips. There shouldn’t be anything in there that you wouldn’t want your kids taking a photo in.
I hear a lot of moms saying, “Oh, this is their play clothes,” and they are just destroyed. Those are not play clothes. Those are rags, junk. It is not serving anyone.
All of my kids’ clothes are simple, basic, kind of fashionable (cause I like to dress my kids like that). If they were to put on anything from their closet or dressers, I would be happy if we went out somewhere in that, or if I were to take a picture of them in that. That’s my guideline. If it fits really well, if it’s in season, it stays. That’s pretty much it. I am really mellow and simplistic about minimalism when it comes to my clothes. You have to find that balance too.
Having said that, less clothes equals less to wash. Period. A lot of people tell me that if they simplify their clothes they will have to wash more. That doesn’t make any sense. If you have less clothes, you will be washing less. In my opinion having gone through all different types of clothing amounts and laundry systems, washing clothes in a regular rhythm is far better than having a ton of options that you don’t even really like and having the ability to get so behind that you have a “laundry mountain” situation in your house.
Now, my laundry routine. This is what I have done and it has worked so, so well for me. I have had the base of this for almost a year now. A few months ago, Emily Ley, (who I just adore and who was one of our Purpose Society speakers) shared on her Instagram story a few months ago what her easy laundry routine was. I borrowed a few things from her, especially about the Shout Color Catchers that I am going to share in a second, and fine-tuned my laundry routine. It perfected it and made it so much easier.
Here it is: I do one load of laundry pretty much every day. There are a couple of days here and there where maybe there is a bit more work to be done that day, maybe we are behind in school, maybe someone is not feeling well, maybe we have a really busy day and we leave in the morning and we don’t come back until that evening, of course, every once in a while, there is a day where I don’t do it. I am a human being.
But 95% of the time I do a load of laundry every day. I start it in the morning. It is part of my morning routine. With the routine, at first you set an alarm on your phone to remind yourself to get into that habit. After a few weeks, probably less, you are going to remember to do it. Now my morning routine always looks the same. I do the same 5-6 things of self-care in the mornings, and then start the housework for the day. It is really, really easy.
I start a load of laundry in the morning. I have a hamper in everyone’s room. My house is two stories and my laundry is on the second story. I have a hamper downstairs in the hallway closet because sometimes people take off their socks, kitchen rags, etc. Then there is hamper in my daughter’s room, a hamper in the boys’ room, and a hamper in our room. Everyone has a hamper and everyone knows it is part of our house routine to put their dirty clothes in their hamper.
In the morning I go through the rooms in the house and I collect the dirty clothes. I put them all in one hamper. Since I am doing laundry so often there is not a mass of laundry that it won’t fit in one hamper. I collect whatever is there.
I can’t have a lot of dust in my house because my daughter has allergies, so if there is not enough to do a big load, I will take the curtains off, or the bed linens, sheets, things like that. I collect whatever needs to be washed, whatever is in the hamper, dump it in my washer/dryer.
When we moved in our new house I invested in a really large barrel washer and dryer. My machines can fit three loads. I haven’t found the need for that, but it is just nice to know that with so many kids I have room. It comes in handy when I am doing the bedding.
I collect whatever I am going to wash, dump it in there, add a few of the Tide Pods. With the Tide Pods, apparently, you are supposed to add more Pods according to the size and soil level of your load. So, if I am doing a pretty big load, I will add two Tide Pods. Then I drop in a Shout Color Catcher. This way I don’t have to sort my clothes.
It is amazing. These things work. I kid you not. Just to test it, I terrifyingly washed a bright red, brand new, never-before-worn, baseball sock with one of their brand new pairs of stark-white baseball pants. I put a Shout Color Catcher in that load. There was a bunch of other stuff in there too, but I purposefully put something that was white with something that was red. I washed it together with a Shout Color Catcher and not a lick of red leaked anywhere. It was amazing. I have used these for months and months. They are amazing. I love them.
I do a quick wash cycle that way. Whatever is dirty goes in. I do my Tide Pods (or whatever laundry detergent you use) and then a Shout Color Catcher. I shut the lid and I start the quick wash cycle. If your laundry machine doesn’t have a quick wash, just do normal or whatever. I don’t put it on scalding hot and I don’t do it on freezing cold; it is just medium warm. The quick wash cycle on my machine is 33 minutes.
It does its thing and then at some point during that same day, whether it is later that morning, that evening, or later that night before I go to bed, I dry the load, fold it and put it away.
Typically, what happens is I do that in the morning around 7 or 8. It’s the last thing I do in my morning routine because I wait for everyone to wake up before I go into their rooms and collect laundry. Later around 9 or 10, after breakfast and everyone is settled, I will change the load into the dryer. Then that afternoon when everyone is resting and it’s naptime for Emmett, I will make sure it’s dry (run it again if it needs it), pull it out and dump it on my bed. I usually fold that same load at the end of the day before I go to bed.
Usually I will do a facial mask, sit there watching I Love Lucy and letting my mask get hardened, and fold the load and put all the clothes away. I usually have everyone put their own laundry away, so if it is late at night and they are already asleep, I will leave it out in the hallway on the cabinet top where the towels go and then have them put it away in the morning. The kids are used to that.
Basically, it is just one load every single day. Remember, one load a day keeps the “mountain” away, right? I do a quick wash, Shout Color Catcher, Tide Pods. Wash that load. At some point by the end of that same day, the load has gone through the drying process, the folding process, and is put away.
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Do you feel like you are barely getting through your days friend? Does motherhood feel more like a hurricane of chaos that you are just surviving rather than the awesome, joy-filled season that you want it to be?
Well, motherhood is hard. I am not going to lie to you about that. While it is servitude and giving to your family from yourself, it doesn’t have to be something that we are waiting to be over. Something that we are counting down the minutes till naptime, or bedtime, or waiting for the next day to start. If you are wanting to sort through the clutter in your mind, your heart, your home calendar, your health, routines, and relationships, I created Unburdened just for you!
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Unburdened is the overwhelmed beginner’s guide to a simpler motherhood.
In Unburdened, I will walk you through how to stop over-complicating, procrastinating, and just start making positive changes now. How to declutter, just a little bit – not super deep into it, because you can’t handle that when you are this overwhelmed – but a surface declutter that will get you real results in your house so you can clean up less.
How to declutter toxic relationships in your life and set some good boundaries. How to simplify cleaning, get healthy and feel better – finally!
How to simplify your calendar. How to start owning your time and not just managing it as life happens to you.
How to stop just setting goals and letting them sit there. Start actually defining where you want to go and getting there through reverse engineering and goal-setting.
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This course is a mini-course. It is small. It is straightforward. But it is everything for the mom who feels like she needs a total overhaul, but is too overwhelmed to start.
It will help you simplify the things that have you stuck and leave survival mode behind for good.
Is this resonating with you? Sound like you? Does this sound like something that would really help you right now? Go to bit.ly/getunburdened.
I really poured my heart into this little course. I created it for the mom who is really wanting to simplify, declutter, and pursue a life of less, but she is so burdened and overwhelmed with the mess of life. It’s not just her house. She wants to simplify at the surface of all the different things in her life so she can focus on her family more. So then she can focus more on really, truly purging her entire house.
If this sounds like you, I encourage you to check it out. You are probably the person I created it for. I want you in there. I want it to help you.
Check it out. bit.ly/getunburdened
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That’s pretty much it. Super simple. I don’t feel things like this should be over-complicated.
There’s a lot of people, a lot of influencers, a lot of magazine articles out there, that tell you how to simplify your life and then the routine is so over-complicated because they are adding fluff to appear like they are an expert.
We can really simplify these core areas of our lives and make our lives so much easier. Simplification should never be over-complicated.
This is what I do. I get so many questions about how I do my laundry, how I never have “mountain laundry” even with four kids. Even when my kids were babies, I started to figure this out.
Doing one load a day is so much better than having a set laundry day. In my opinion, there is no day of the week that is worth me spending the bulk of my time washing and folding clothes. If that is what you prefer, you do you.
But for me, I would rather just have it in my daily routine. Half an hour of putting the load in, folding and putting it away, once a day. It keeps the laundry at bay and I know that it is pretty impossible for me to get super behind.
That’s my simplified laundry routine. I hope it helps you and inspires you. I will link to Emily Ley in the show notes because she is the Simplification Queen. She is amazing and you need to follow her. I have definitely adapted the quick wash cycle and the Shout Color Catcher part of my routine from her. It has really, really helped me.
That’s it! I hope this helps and inspires you!
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This was an episode of The Purpose Show. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you are ready to uplevel and really take action on the things I talk about on my show, head to alliecasazza.com for free downloads, courses, classes and to learn more about what the next step might look like for you. I am always rooting for you. See ya next time!
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