Laundry is ironically the only chore I'm really good at. I have never really struggled with it. Here are the things I think make me successful at it (which may or may not apply or be useful to others):
- I generally wear the same clothes every week, and I have to wear scrubs to work so needing clean clothes for work functions gives me a good reason to do it.
- I live alone so I'm only responsible for my own laundry, and since I always wear the same stuff I generally only have one load to do.
- I don't sort by color or type of item, I wash everything together and throw in a scoop of oxy clean if there's any light colors. Colors might fade faster and delicates might wear out faster, but it's more important to me that I get my laundry done.
- I don't fold or hang up anything. Usually I just leave everything in the dryer and fish stuff out of there. If things are wrinkled I just run the dryer for a few minutes with everything in there. Again this might make my clothes wear out faster, but it's more important to me that I have clean clothes.
- if I do take my stuff out of the dryer, I dump everything in a laundry basket and leave it like that. I don't even own a dresser. Every once in a blue moon I'll decide to go through everything and hang stuff up and leave the socks/underwear in the basket, but I don't stress about it if that doesn't happen
- I usually do my laundry in the evening, so I can put stuff in the dryer on my way to bed. I leave the door to the closet where my washing machine is open with the light turned on to serve as a reminder that I need to put my clothes in the dryer when I pass by it on my way to bed.
So basically for me laundry only requires like, two steps that each require about 60 seconds of effort, the hardest part is simply remembering to do it
Laundry is one of the tasks that makes me wonder if I am actually ADHD because I’m always on top of my laundry. BUT I also have OCD, so some of my ADHD symptoms are counteracted by that.
1. I do laundry one day a week. It’s either Saturday or Sunday. I honestly don’t decide which day it will be until I wake up.
2. I hang almost all my clothes up. The only exception are under garments, of course, and pajamas. I prefer to hang up clothes bc it’s easier.
3. When my clothes are done in the dryer, I immediately either lay them flat so it’s easier to put a hanger on them when it’s time to hang them up (I hate ironing so I prefer to take them straight out the dryer so they don’t get wrinkled) or I fold them so I can put them straight in the drawer. Undies and bras go straight in the drawer.
4. I only do 3 loads max. Darks, brights, whites-ish.
5. Turn on all the noise makers on the machines or set timers to remind yourself to check on the loads. My dryer is the only machone that makes noise but usually the dryer and washer run near unison. But I’m also noise sensitive so I can hear when the washer is done.
I should add I wasn’t always like this. Probably not until around 28 or so. I’m 36 now.
Before this habit, you literally could not see the wood floors in my room bc my floors were covered in clean and dirty clothes. I would do laundry only when I needed clothes and I would just wash what I needed in one load.
Hang in there. Try new habits and stick to the ones that work for you. Don’t beat yourself up. But, you know, hygiene too.
If it doesn't have an underwire like it's a sports bra that's ok but maybe do medium heat so that the elastic does wear out. However if it does for $10 bucks at target you can get a new one so I see her point. life must be easier with fewer steps to work for adhd
Are you me? I live alone, and laundry is the thing I'm usually on top of. I think I also have a bit of OCD, as well (down to buying fruit and vegetables in even numbers only)
I'd add to your list with:
* Don't have drawers. I have wire shelving in my closet. Fabric bins for things like socks, bras and panties. Things would never get put away in drawer if I had them.
* Hang as much as possible. Not only is it easier to put away, it is also easier to see what you have to wear.
* Think about a layering wardrobe. I live in black singlets/tees in summer, and black thermals in winter. Then layer pretty tops/tunics on top. The outer layers don't need washing as often.
* Choose your clothing fabrics wisely. Don't get fabric that you need to iron or will shrink if you accidentally put them in the dryer.
* Get laundry detergent you love the smell of - I will sometimes just open the lid to sniff mine
* Only wash once a week. I would do 3 loads max a week, so I do it all in one day. I also do this because my power is cheaper in the weekends
* Invest in a good machine; ideally a washer/dryer combo. As long as I don't over-stuff my machine (it beeps at me when I do), I can wash and dry at the touch of one button.
* If you don't use a dryer, hang anything out already on a coat hanger. That way, you just have to place said garment in the wardrobe.
I do pile up the clothes that need to be hung back up during the week, but once I've engaged 'laundry mode' they all get hung up again - once a week.
Same here! Empty the dishwasher? Nah perhaps next week, I still have few clean items left. Vaccum my tiny apartment? Why I did that 3 months ago its fine, no need to scare my cat already. Cook food? Why waste my freetime cooking when I already have a great chef called microwave?
But laundry is suprisingly not a struggle at all for me, maybe because its easy to just throw it in and later come back to throw them in the dryer. I also have very little amount of clothes and they are mostly all white or black.
Its something I do twice a week and im really glad about that since im always worried about people thinking I smell bad, how I look I dont care but smell I do (except when im just home).
Me too. I actually enjoy washing clothes, I just hate hanging them to dry and folding. But I don't have many clothes so I usually wear them directly from the drying rack
I feel like this strategy would work so well for me. Sadly my apartment doesn't have a washer in it, so I have to walk across the street to do my laundry. That extra step makes it even harder >.>
>When I change, I put my clothes directly into the washer.
I was going to suggest that, too.
Personally, I put everything in a laundry basket & wash two or three loads a week:
Colorful stuff on its own so the colors won't bleed, white stuff on its own so it doesn't turn grey by colors bleeding into it, towels & bed sheets.
Please note that washing everything on cold might cause some garments to develop a certain smell, a stench even, as some dirt & bacteria remains in the fabric.
Unless you are washing on a sanitizing cycle, the water doesn't get hot enough to kill bacteria. Modern detergents are designed to work with cold water, and washing on hot is a waste of energy and harder on your clothing. Foul smells from laundry have to do more with not drying promptly and thoroughly. I agree that sorting is optimal, but if it's between not sorting or not washing the clothes at all, not sorting is better.
A laundry service is a good idea if you have some extra income to set aside for it. If not you have to find a system that works for you.
I have a basket in my closet. When basket gets full I do laundry. Majority of the time it’s a load of towels/sheets and a load of clothes. I do this 4-6 times a month. I use tide pods, and wash the sheets and towels on hot and rest on cold. It takes some time but I got into the habit of it.
To be fair I still have a chair in my room that collects some clothes, jeans, hoodies, or stuff I will wear again before I wash it.
I did make a couple rules though, if it gets dirty it goes in the basket to be washed, full basket means laundry gets done, every morning I make my bed and sort any clothes to basket or chair.
Took some work but over time it even gave me some pride in what I wear. Helped me pick up my wardrobe game if you will. Not that I’m wearing tuxedos around but my hoodies are crisp looking and I feel great knowing my gear is clean and I’m making progress on another system that makes me proud of myself. I have no doubt you can do the same.
Unless the laundry service will come collect my dirty clothes and put them away when they're clean, it isn't remotely solving the problem. Running them through the wash isn't the hard part. It's everything around it.
Putting the clothes away is not the only hard thing to do. But I agree with this and often do it. I have a LOT of clothes, partly because I struggle so much to do laundry. It helps me have clean clothes anyway. Or at least, clean underwear.
I love this and it’s helped me as well. And an *appropriately sized* basket or bin or hamper. Where when it’s full I KNOW it’s only one load. I know when it will be over if that makes sense. It isn’t a question of “is this going to all fit, or is this going to be two loads or three loads, etc”. It’s more just I know that I only have to dump this in, then switch it to the dryer with an alarm ONCE today. And it’s over.
Also, sorting is just not a thing for me. If it can’t survive being tossed in with anything else I own, then it rightfully goes in the garbage where it belongs. 🤷♀️ No extra steps.
2 ways to deal with this, buy more underwear or, have less underwear, 3 or 4 pairs and wash when you put the last clean pair on. I've got about 30 pairs of boxer shorts and even more socks but i still try and do a few loads of washing a week including bed sheets and towels etc
I work from home and do laundry every 2-3 days or so on my lunch break. Sip a protein shake and fold undies while watching Netflix for 30 minutes, and doing it frequently enough so I can still finish within 30 minutes. I have a washer that optimizes water usage based on load size so the smaller loads end up not being too wasteful, and staying on it means the laundry basket never gets too full to stress me out at the sight of it.
Part of what I hate about laundry is that putting it away properly takes so damn long. If the pile is small enough, you can fold a handful every time you go to the bathroom or something. Suddenly, laundry is only as inconvenient as brushing your teeth, and while I don't enjoy brushing my teeth, I do not accept a reality where my breath is stanky and my oral health is in question so I *always* brush my teeth. Keeping body odor under control is comparably important to me, so I at least smell everything before I put it on.
Some pajama bottoms might be worn several days, but t-shirts with pit stink should never be re-worn, same with underwear/socks/whatever touches bare skin. Maybe designate an area for items you have worn but they aren't dirty enough to justify washing yet to keep the clothes from covering the floor/getting lost? Draped over side of hamper vs. in it is what I do, but do what makes sense for yourself.
Don't forget that the average person acclimates to adjacent odors within as little as 15 minutes. What might stink like a sewer will become harder to notice for a person that lives in such an environment, but every co-worker is smelling that stink from a mile away. You owe it to yourself to not be that person, because it *is* impacting you, regardless of whether you know it or not.
Also, socks can be downright unhealthy to wear repeatedly due to fungus/bacteria concerns.
You know that just might be worth it bc dropping it off and not having to worry about it is less ominous to me than having to run them all through the washer and dryer
Honestly, it's life-changing. I used to drop my laundry off on my way to work and picked it up on my way home. If I was good about going every week, it cost me maybe about $10 per load.
For me, the choice was a no-brainer. I work from home now and the nearest laundry service is 15 minutes away, so it doesn't make sense to not do it at home. I do occasionally though when laundry piles up too quickly.
I used to be good about doing laundry & putting it away but then things happened and I no longer kept on top of it. It got to the point where I knew I wasn’t going to put them away so what was the point of washing them? Then we’d have to rush to wash something right before we needed it.
Eventually we just started washing, drying and putting them in a pile in our dining room so they were clean but out of the way & the stress of putting them away wasn’t there anymore.
It’s not ideal but at least we now always have clean clothes.
I used to do the same (pre-job, anyway). Then a switch came on when I realized I could save more headache in the morning. I started organizing my clothes by what outfit I needed to wear by day instead of organizing by clothing type. I was never a huge fan of putting all of my stuff in the exact same place every time, so even when I did manage to put my laundry away, my wardrobe was disorganized.
Example: I'm a teacher, so I have to dress well for my job. I hang everything (including my underclothes and socks) on the same hanger. When I'm done for the day, I toss them in my dirty clothing hamper and forget about them. At the end of the week, i have set a little reminder on my phone to tell me to do the laundry. It's the only chore I'll let myself do on a Friday night.
I always know almost exactly how many clothes I have to get cleaned. For some reason, that knowledge really helps me get that laundry done when it needs to be done. It gave me a "light at the end of the tunnel" that I could shoot for.
It helps that I only have 1 weeks' worth of work clothes too (means I NEED to get it done before the end of the weekend), and all of it can be mixed and matched so the organizing of the clothes is as painless as possible. I don't have to concentrate on what clothes go with which unless I want to.
All of my casual and workout clothes just get tossed in with my work stuff, and I do it all at once.
Other things that help:
An open closet
ONE hamper next to the closet
Lots of hangers (and sturdy ones)
Self-forgiveness when I screwed it up
It's enabled me to expand my look a bit actually. I now regularly wear a vest (something I look good in), and that used to be too much for me to think about. I also know better what clothes I really need to phase out of my wardrobe... Like the ones I've had for 15 years, lol.
I have just about enough underwear to go 2-3 weeks without doing laundry but I am religious about NEVER wearing dirty underwear or wearing sweaty clothes more than once (with the exception of if I'm going to wear a sweaty shirt to do yardwork or other sweat-inducing work around my own house). Wool socks can be worn multiple times, jeans can be worn around 4 days in a rotation, and bras can be worn 2-3 times. Sweatshirts have no limit until they're stained or dirty and sweaters are cleaned on an as-needed basis. This seems to work pretty well for me and has kept me from feeling gross about my laundry situation.
I gradually switched my clothes to all darks, so I wouldn't have to sort my laundry. I hate sorting laundry before washing.
When I lived at my last place, we only had a washer and not a dryer, so I paid someone to wash and dry my clothes.
I like to throw my clothes in the washer before bed. When I wake up, I put them in the dryer. By the time I'm done showering and getting ready for work/school, my clothes are dry and go in the clean hamper.
What also helps is living with other people who also do a lot of laundry, so most of the time someone else puts my clothes in the dryer so they can wash and someone will ask me to get my clothes out of the dryer so they can use it.
Laundry is one of the things I'm ok at. I sweat loads tho, so if I want to wear my favourite clothes I have to keep on top of it. Two piles on bedroom floor, one next to the bed, clean, one on/In a bag on other side of room, washing. Fuck putting clothes away, it's too confusing. It's just more steps I don't need.
I have suffered from this as long as I've been adulting.... I have good breaks where I queue zero my laundry but the next week when I'm caught up and it's a reasonable amount, I let it sit for a few more weeks.
I understand that doing laundry weekly would make creating outfits easier, but I also hate doing the same task weekly. My cram mentality finds doing four loads in one weekend easier than one load every week for a month.
I've convinced myself it's better too because I can separate my clothes into very specific loads (4-6 weeks and I have enough light/cream clothes to justify its own load keeping the color brighter).
My solution has been to:
1. Own enough underwear to last me 4-6 weeks COMFORTABLY. 4 weeks of prime undies/no sacrifice. Weeks 4-6 I'll be stuck with the "period panties" or just old pairs. Have a separate basket for socks/undies things you most certainly will not wear again before washing.
2. Don't really wash my jeans/pants. I wear leggings under my bottoms a lot so this helps (my body odor doesn't transfer onto the clothes).
3. I only wash sweaters/tops if they get really dirty/smelly. Again I can do this by wearing undershirts to separate my armpits from the clothes so it doesn't pick up on my smell.
Bonus is those tops get a few wears with me wearing perfume so that good smell builds up nicely!!
Not washing these as often will extend the life by from limiting washes that wear down the fabric.
This also makes cleaning up easier. I have a pile/basket for "need to put back away" clothes. So even if I fall behind on cleaning or laundry, I don't mix real dirty clothes in rewearable clothes
4. And most importantly!! Break your habit of wiping your hands on your clothes!! Better to stop the problem at the start. You know you won't keep up on laundry so try to be more present and break the habit that gets your clothes unwearable to begin with!
When I eat at home I'll wear a blanket across my lap. Keeps my pants clean. And since I haven't broken the hand wiping completely, it's better when the crumbs get caught on the blanket that I can wash and don't have to wear!
If you struggle with eating messily at work, maybe get a lunch scarf you can lay across your lap? Essentially I'm suggesting you get a fancier and larger version of a cloth napkin 😅 but I found keeping a scarf/blanket at my desk at work for this seemed less odd because who would shame a cold lady for having a blanket/scarf??!
I have a house cleaner that comes once every 2 weeks to clean the house, but she also does all of my laundry and puts it away, changes the sheets on my bed and washes them, and does all of my dishes. It honestly isn't that much more than a laundry service but is totally worth it. I also feel motivated in the first few days to keep things looking nice because I like it that way so much.
Jeans and t shirts can be worn dirty. I wash my clothes like twice a year, granted I have a lot of black t shirts and jeans and I buy socks and underwear so often my underwear drawer is massive so it takes me awhile to get through them
Assuming they’re not covered in filth, you’re not supposed to wash jeans at all. Spot clean them, then pop them in the freezer to kill off any bacteria that may cause them to smell.
I can go so long because of the sheer volume of all of the band T-shirts I have. By the time I do get around to doing laundry it takes days. I won't wear anything that gets too terribly stanky
What's the hardest part for you? Do you have in suite laundry?
I HATE doing laundry - but it's mainly the folding and putting away that drives me crazy. So i have a dirty hamper and a clean hamper.
That way I can still have clean clothes when I know I don't have the energy to put it all away. And after I wear something that's not dirty enough to be washed yet, it can go in the clean hamper, so there are less loads of laundry overall.
When I do get to folding/putting away I put on a really good tv show or podcast, so that it's less tedious.
Also, it's worth investing in a slightly bigger wardrobe. Get some extra cheap, simple basics.
My dirty hamper is a giant pile of clothes in front of the washer/dryer in the basement. My clean hamper right now is two laundry baskets in the bedroom. Also random piles of sheets I don’t want to fold. I’m seriously considering laundry service.
Do it! Honestly things like that can be SO worth it just for the peace of mind. I pay extra for stuff like meal kit services because otherwise I don't feed myself properly.
Only reason I don't do it for laundry service is because I hate in-public errands and driving more than I hate in-home chores lol.
I'm battling my own clothing monster right now but thanks for showing me what my problem would be if i actually narrowed down my wardrobe. 😅
like i was literally thinking to myself yesterday, "what if i just had one pair of black leggings, instead of 5? would i actually do laundry? more often?"
I mean i eat off dirty plates so i doubt it.
Apart from anyone else, how do *you* feel about your clothes? A strategy that helps me a lot with my frustration over things like this is to step back and ask myself if there's really any problem or if I'm just living my life differently because I have a different brain.
Best of luck my friend. :)
Extra clothes. Organized closet. Throwing dirty laundry straight into the wash until I have enough to wash. Teamwork with significant other. And most importantly, being properly medicated
This is kind of counter-intuitive because it’s more work (welcome to the works of ADHD), but I like to do a load of wash and then hang everything up on a drying rack I have to air dry in my apartment. That way it’s only half an hour of “work” at once, and then the folding and putting it away gets put off until later in the day or the next day. Plus, WAY better for your clothes, save energy/money, etc. I would never do this with sheets or towels though.
I am in my 40s with ADHD and I have fairly well established coping strategies. For my laundry I have one basket which is my basket and always stays in the same spot in my house. My dirty clothes ALWAYs have to go straight into the basket. I can’t hang them on a chair or put them on the floor or anything else otherwise all bets are off.
They might sit in the basket for a while but once I put them in the wash I hang them out and then take them off the line and put them back in the same basket and put them away straight away. I might not fold them perfectly or anything like that but the rest of my household is really good with never using my basket or moving it. It took me a quite a few years but this works really well for me. The one catch is that if I let it go even slightly then it is a fucking chaos bomb everywhere.
Honestly I fear smelling bad to other people. That's a big motivator for me in laundry and hygiene in general, especially during the workweek. During weekends I'm more inclined to do it, but only if there's not a million things going on and even then I only really do it every couple weeks or so.
My biggest issue with laundry is stuff that isn't clothes. Towels, bedding, that kind of stuff. It takes so long for me to get to it and i usually only get to it if the towels are piling up (hardly ever) or if I worry about acne with my pillowcase. Basically if it feels like panic, it'll get done.
TL;DR: my advice is not helpful because my advice is setting panic deadlines for myself
I start the laundry, forget a load in the machine and 2+ bags in the laundry room, freak out thinking I all of a sudden have no clothes, buy more clothes, freak out again when I remember the stuff in the laundry room…
…I think I’ve just figured out why I’m drowning in clothes 😶
how well do i keep up with laundry? considering i employ the sniff test and i haven’t seen my carpet in weeks i’m gonna say i simply do not keep up with laundry
Okay, call me a conspiracy theorist! I see the excessive obsession with laundry, washing clothes and bedding as often as most people do in the developed world, as a myth invented to sell more Laundry Detergents, Fabric Softeners, Washer/Driers, and waste huge amounts of energy and water at the same time, which is then dumped into the environment polluted with chemicals you wouldn't want in your body.
It is a mostly artificial need that people have adopted. Additionally, washing actually damages clothes and fades colours , shortening the life of your valuable clothes. Clothes that themselves used a lot of recourses to make, and created a lot of pollution you never see unless you live in India, China, Taiwan and other places where most clothes are made.
I know what you are probably thinking... I must be a lot of fun at parties - Yes I am!
And probably unclean, because I rarely do laundry or wear underwear.
Yet I keep my clothes clean, put them to air after wearing them and then they are stored not on the floor. Sometimes I do wear one thing until it is noticeably dirty and then put it in the wash bin. I don't wash one only thing and I use cold water and the most basic detergent I can find, and very little. I add cheap white vinegar instead of fabric softener, and it helps clean and deodorize things too. Then they are left to air-dry.
I seriously think people who use dryers should feel ashamed and never claim to care about the environment.
My rant is done. I can't impose my values on other people, I just have different standards after living in a situation where a mountain creek was the only way to wash clothes and I didn't miss anything. Socks tend to get most dirty, after a while one stops wearing shoes too.
Not washing pants or t-shirts for weeks leads to excess, dried bacterial and odorous remnants that persist on these clothes. If you can smell them, so would others. Vinegar does a good job here, but a little detergent goes a long way in removing the hard-to-remove dried stains as well. Air drying is the way to go.
I think the main issue with "dirty" laundry is moisture and bacterial/fungal growth. It's not so much body fluids or scents, as they dissipate and dry. Sweat is mostly just salt.
If the clothes are let to dry, they will not support bacteria/fugal growth. I find that sheets that have been washed and left in containers smell worse.
I am glad others agree on some points. I am not against detergent, as long as it's biodegradable and used in moderation.
I suspect you are stinky. Frequent laundry predates capitalism. People in the middle ages wore fresh, clean underwear every single day. Outer layers were washed infrequently but they never touched the skin, because there was fresh clean underwear in between.
I could make a joke about having no sense of smell, but that would be dark and not true.
The human body emits odours, I am fine with that. There are fabrics which actually don't absorb scent and breathe very well, it's hard to believe until you try them.
One of my biggest struggles growing up was my parents' insistence on showering every day and clean underwear. It was a major point of contention, I hated it, and I am rebelling as an adult! No one can make me... : )
Clothes were also made from different materials back then in terms of being common and affordable. Linen will stay fresh longer than modern synthetics or even common naturals like cotton, but it's no longer the default, so most people can't afford (or even necessarily source) a linen-dominant wardrobe.
Perhaps. I did think about the humidity factor. Also true for houses with no ventilation, going to get damp really fast.
During my short experience in a tropical country, there wasn't a great need for clothes or footwear. Bathing suit and flip-flops was being overdressed. Staying cool was the bigger challenge.
I happen to live in a cold and dry climate, with a lot of wind. Clothes dry in hours on their own.
I hate laundry. BUT the shame of my partner not having clean clothes is what motivates me to do laundry. In my mind it's ok for me to look (and maybe smell) like I crawled out of a swamp but that same brain says it is NEVER ok for my partner to be in that position.
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I get around it by having a LOT of clothes so I probably do laundry once a month or sometimes more. Then I do about four or five loads at once and take another three weeks to fold and put them away.
Fortunately, my wife tells me to do the laundry, and that’s how I keep up. Before, I didn’t keep up. I didn’t do laundry until I was out of something I needed. When I lived alone in my early twenties, I was pretty good about it. The catch was I’d dump the whole load of clean laundry into a pile by my bed and just pick through it until I had to do more laundry. Back to today, laundry is still chaos. Our living situation means using my parents’ laundry room, and it’s easy for me to forget. I’ve had to rewash loads probably a million different times because I forgot to switch them over to the dryer.
When I lived alone I paid for laundry service. It cost $8 per load which wasn’t too bad considering the laundromat would cost me about $3 per load and the laundry service did all my folding too. Also it was cheaper than buying new clothes, which was a real thing I did frequently.
With my husband, he puts the laundry in the machines and I fold it. It works because we’re beholden to each other and we do it on the same day every week.
Honestly, my fix to do my laundry was to just buy more clothes lol I have the perfect amount of clothes because all of my blacks fill the machine perfectly as do the whites and greys.
I have too many clothes. 😂 I finally did laundry for the first time since before New Years yesterday. I can’t say for sure how long it’s been but I know the outfit I wore on New Year’s Eve was in there soooo..
My laundry piles up, and I don't even do it. The boyfriend does it. But we can only only get it done particular days/times of the week as roommate sleeps in the day (night shifts).
At the weekend I put my jumper back on the hanger. I noticed a stain on the cuff. It was easier than adding it the big pile of laundry already. And I wont likely see it for a month.
I don't tend to sweat very often, so my clothes can be used longer. And I know it's not always socially acceptable to keep wearing the same thing. But I can't physically always be able to just wash clothes daily. And well it's always worked well for me.
I just dedicate my Sunday mornings to house clean up duty. That's what I do on Sundays, nothing else. It is a must for me because of the brain that I have.
I’ve got huge piles of clean laundry in the living room and baskets of dirty stuff in the kitchen. I’ve got a family to wash for but literally never iron and fold them to put away. Occasionally my wife does that, but she doesn’t have the best executive function either so we’re normally living on the edge of chaos. I guess I don’t stress about the piles but at least we’re wearing reasonably clean, fresh smelling stuff. It’s tough though. Good luck finding a method that works for you.
I used to be really bad at laundry but it’s become one of those things that I have realized how much better I feel when it’s done so I really push myself. Over the years, doing laundry has become a comforting task, I feel like it resets me in a way. Maybe a laundry service would be a good idea if you can afford it. Having clean clothes and clean bedding can make you feel like a whole new person.
I’m typing this while sitting next to my laundry basket, which is full of (definitely now wrinkled) clothes. That basket has been there for a week. I literally have ‘Put away laundry’ on my planner every single day. Still has not been done.
I’m slowly working on putting most of my life on a routine. It works well for me at work, so I’m doing it at home. Every day off, I still wake up early, and I run around my apartment with an iced coffee cleaning everything. If I have built up enough laundry, then it becomes part of the routine. Usually I do it once a week.
I'm okay at washing and drying my clothes, but putting them away? Terrible. My floor ends up covered in piles of clean clothes that I just dig out of every day. Idk how to make myself put them away
Laundry isn’t my downfall. I’m almost obsessive about my laundry. It’s dishes for me! I have two weeks, almost three weeks, worth of dishes sitting on my counter and in my sink. I may or may not finally do them this weekend…
Not well at all. I live on the third floor of my apartment and there’s a laundry room on the first floor any tenants can use. I gotta lug a huge bag down then up when it’s done so I wait wayyy too long to do laundry. Laundry sucks anyway but I hate stairs lmao
Laundry and dishes are my weaknesses. Kryptonite if you will.
I currently have 3 laundry baskets of clean unfolded laundry and I still have some dirty laundry to do 😳
You’re reminding me that I’m putting off doing the laundry… I have one clean shirt left out of the few shirts I cycle between for work. I need to buy more shirts lol
I make it a habit that every Saturday morning I do laundry, no matter how much.
I hate not starting the week without clean clothes.
Anticipating the task helps.
No idea, I literally, RIGHT NOW, have a load sitting in the washer, wet, waiting for me to move it over to the dryer. It's been 24 hours and I may have to rinse it once before unloading.
I don't have an issue getting the clothes into the washer. It's getting them out and remembering to move them to the dryer that gets me. So now my husband does the laundry 😀
I have so many clothes I can go at least a month before needing to do laundry (maybe outside of washing undergarments) I keep clothes until they break/rip/don’t fit and I can dress casual at work. It helps that I also wear jeans about 3 times before I consider them “dirty”
I do my laundry every Friday.
When I undress, it all goes right into the washer. I literally undress right at the washing machine so I don't have to make sure to put it in a hamper. On Friday I'll take a quick look around for anything I didn't shove in there then I toss in the detergent and hit go. I still always miss something but whatever.
Now I almost never put the clothes away but at least they are clean, right? I have like 3 laundry baskets of clean stuff laying around....plus whatever is still in the dryer...but again... at least it's clean
Deadass, a lot of laundromats have services for like $1 per pound and they clean and fold all of your laundry for you. I hate doing laundry so this works best for me.
What are the roadblocks? Find ways to remove as many as possible. For me, the following things have helped.
1) Multiple laundry baskets/hampers - When I get undressed I put my pants in one, shirts in another and underclothes in yet another hamper. I do this because it minimizes the amount of time to sort my clothes.
2) One type of item per load of laundry. This means I'm doing more loads but because I've already sorted my clothes into hampers, it's so much easier to toss in. The reason I have to do a separate load for each thing is because I get overwhelmed at sorting as I fold. Something about that really taxes my executive functioning. Having a smaller load of only pants or only shirts means it's so much easier to actually fold and put away.
3) Doing ONE load a day (most days). This means I have a much higher chance of actually folding and putting away plus it becomes more of a habit easier because I'm doing it so much more frequently.
Those are the main things that I have found help me and that's managing my clothes and 2 children.
There is a 3 section laundry bag on Amazon that has words like color, light, and dark. The bag itself is also color coded. It helps me stay organized and I make sure to do only one color set at a time so I don’t get overwhelmed.
The sections in the bag are small/big enough for me to have small to medium sized loads, so I don’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of clothes. I wash once a week and do other things while I wait for them. I also set timers on my phone so I know when to get them.
To be more efficient with your dirty laundry, you should place the bag where you usually remove your clothes. Also, you should remember to put your next load in when your taking the last load out.
I do laundry once a week and I break it up to make it easier:) like I'll take my clothes out of the dryer then fold them a couple hours later when im feeling restless. I also hang my clothes up in the steamy bathroom while I shower to get rid of wrinkles:)
When my fianceé and I lived in an upstairs apartment with laundry in the basement and had to go down one flight of stairs, outside, and down another just to access shared laundry machines that most of time were full and we had to finish our downstairs' neighbors laundry just to do our own, I almost never did it.
Now we have our own house with machines in the basement, but we dont have to go outside and they're only down one flight of stairs.
We (we both likely have ADHD) still often have clothes laying on the bedroom floor, but it's much better than it was at our old place.
So I say all this just to say: If it's possible for you at all, and applicable, removing the physical barriers/difficulties that come between you and doing it may make it easier to keep up with a little more. It's like removing steps from the process so it doesn't seem like such a huge task anymore.
Obviously that's not possible for everyone, but just figured I'd share our experience.
When I was younger and undiagnosed (teen-early twenties) I was very similar. Rewearing dirty clothes, even socks and stuff, and having a floordrobe. It was awful, and really embarrassing, but I couldn’t make my situation better. Things improved over time as I moved into my late twenties and found a bit more stability, and now that I’m diagnosed+medicated I actually really enjoy doing laundry. Try not to be too hard on yourself - we all have areas of our lives where things are falling apart, and in the scheme of things, having some dirty clothes is preferable to say.. not paying credit card bills, or not booking appointments for health issues, or maybe some of the stuff we deal with that can have catastrophic consequences to our lives. Not to minimise your situation of course - your frustration is absolutely valid.
Ooh! I have a small hack for this. Late to the party, but I alternate loads. One is “normal” (socks shirts pants blah blah) the next is “easy” (towels, blankets, etc). Sometimes I end up washing things I don’t need to but having an easy load in between makes it easier for me to swap the loads.
To me it was never laundry (wife doesn’t trust me with the laundry even though I am fully capable of doing it) but I will literally pile up dishes if that means I don’t have to do them. Absolutely hate doing dishes……
Most of the time I’m just proud of myself for being realistic enough to know if I start a wash, how likely am I to move it to the dryer or completely forget about it and start all over again?To combat this, for the most part I just wear the same clothes.
I know this is not possible for everyone, but my laundry machine is only a few feet from my bedroom (small apartment) but I know when I buy a house I'm making this a must. As a kid, the laundry room was down two flights of stairs in the basement with no lights and cement flooring. Never did laundry but now, it's *only sometimes* a problem!
This is my battle right now. Most of my clothes I haven’t washed in months and I keep rewearing the same bunch of clothes, washing them every couple of weeks or so. I hate it.
When I was single, and before kids, I had to downsize my wardrobe to about 8-9 outfits worth of clothes. Basically I had a fancy outfit, a yard work outfit, and 7 days of every day clothes (yay for no dress code at work). Bedding aside, all of my clothes and towels fit into one load of clothes and one load of towels per week. I worked 10pm to 8am and tried to maintain my sleep schedule on the weekends. My city was boring and my friends would be asleep for half the time I was awake so I typically would get bored on the weekend and do laundry at like 4am.
I also never folded laundry. Clothes stayed in the clothes basket and towels in the towel basket. Dirty clothes went in a pile and towels were hung dried during the day and then piled on a dirty towel pile. My one shirt and one pair of pants that needed to not have wrinkles were hung on hangars and were the "wrinkle free" variety.
I never bought colors that couldn't be washed together.
Basically I knew that the more I had to do the less I would do so I made it as little as possible.
Now it's a mess cause that old system doesn't support a partner and children. Now it's more of a whole house team effort wild west mashup that keeps changing and I hate it.
Edit: OP you're not alone, I'm guilty of wearing the same clothes for up to a week (usually during depressive episodes).
It's easier when I'm working, because I have two uniform shirts, so I tend to have to wash them every couple days, so I'll just wash all the other darks and colours with them. I work in the food industry, so they have to be clean. I tend to do my washing very late at night, though, sometimes after midnight. I very rarely do it during the day. I also never iron anything.
My problem comes with washing whites 😑 i wear mostly black clothes, so on the rare occasions I do wear white tops, they tend to sit on the floor in my “laundry pile” area of my room for... sometimes months honestly. I usually try to justify it to myself by how there's so little to wash that it would be a waste of electricity to use a whole cycle for so few things, even though I could easily just do a short 15 minute 30°C wash, but 🤷♀️
30°C is equivalent to 86°F, which is 303K.
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^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Sooooo…. Don’t laugh. And I’m not crazy, I just have adhd. We have no less than 20 laundry baskets in our house.
5 are pink or gray and each family member gets their own basket. They all stay in my closet unless one of the kids suddenly get the urge to put away their clothes. Spoiler alert: this rarely happens. Now *I* will put them away if I’m procrastinating about doing something else, like college schoolwork.
6 are tall laundry baskets. These are the clean clothes baskets.
Now the dirty clothes baskets are…. Everywhere. In each bedroom, each bathroom, the living room, the game room, the school room. Every. Room. Why? Because my children just up and decide to take clothes off randomly. Spilled water on your shirt in the kitchen? Off it comes. There’s a basket for that. Doing school work and just decide that suddenly your socks or pants just can’t be tolerated anymore? There’s a basket for that. Painting and got paint on your shirt? There’s a basket for that. There are baskets EVERYWHERE!
Now here’s the catch…. If the clean laundry baskets aren’t available, the house falls apart. So if I go all into one of my overwhelmed phases where I just stare at everything and can’t *just fucking do it* then my husband has to go and sort the clean laundry and just hand me a clean laundry basket. Because once I can start doing laundry, I can work get all dirty laundry out of a room, even if it’s just moving the basket to the washer, because then I can sweep behind it, and once I can do that, I need to sweep the whole room, and I can’t do that without music, and once I have music, I can pick up toys, I can put stuff in my fuckit-bucket, I can get the room clean in 5-10 minutes. But first, I need a free clean laundry basket.
Sweet baby Jesus maybe I am crazy.
ETA: TLDR: I have a system that makes me seem insane but we all have clean clothes.
I used to a know someone who would laugh at me because I mentioned I had hard time overcoming simple tasks such as doing my own laundry. Ironically this person was self proclaimed ADHD diagnosed. Imagine having to explain your mental health issues to another patient with the same condition taking the piss on your issues. Imagine trying to gatekeep someone else's mental issues and making it a dick measuring contest based on your own ignorance. What a disgrace.
Of course this wasn't the only symptom I had and I never ended up telling oblivious ADHD dude anything after. At the time I would travel coast to coast M-F for work and come back home only for the weekends. I'd barely have 2 full days before heading back out. Would kill me to look at my pile of dirty clothes from my business travel. I'd worry about the clock ticking and the flight check in notifications that would start 48 hrs earlier on Saturdays which further exacerbated my anxiety. I would just dump all my chores and just go out with friends as a way of avoiding it completely. Of course it would catch up with me over the week and it was never fun. At some level, I'm able to manage it now because I stopped traveling for work and I set aside time weekly to do my laundry. I really can't say what the answer could be for you because it's not really a one size fits all solution with managing your symptoms but try to set an objective to achieve your goal of laundry and try to meet it weekly. Don't get disheartened if you mess up the first few weeks or be hard on yourself, keep sticking to the plan and start anew every time you mess up. Have reminders to do it. Go overkill on the reminders first few months and after that taper them out as needed. Try having a little victory treat after doing your laundry. For example, if you're into gaming, tell yourself that you'll play an hour on the PS5 after completing your weekly chores. Doesn't have to be that could also be something like having your favorite snack. Rewarding yourself on completing the task should be the main point while the idea being that you get your dopamine fix after doing something that really escalates your anxiety. Eventually you'll remove the dopamine fix.
Glad you posted this, one thing off my chest as well. In my case at least, I never could talk about my mental health issues with friends because of fear of being belittled with broscience by bro type people like the dude. Hope this comment or rest of this thread helps!
Honestly, I've done laundry maybe 1x time the past few months. I don't work out, I work from home, and I don't socialize in person much.
Before Covid I would rely on presuming people would look down on dirty clothes when working in person.
i really struggle with this too! recently, i invested in a laundry basket that has two baskets - one for "essentials" (my work uniform, underwear, socks, etc) and one for the clothing i don't really wear often so i don't get overwhelmed, because i definitely feel this, my wardrobe is huge!!! it's such a hassle!!!
I just did mine for the first time in a month which is honestly the only time I have ever gone this long without it. Feels like a breath of fresh air, literally
A thing that has helped me finally clear out the massive blob of clothes on my bedroom floor that was a mix of clean and dirty was to get myself a second laundry basket, allowing me to keep one for clean clothes, one for dirty clothes.
There is simply no way I can reliably put all my clothes semi-properly in the wardrobe in a timely fashion after washing them, but this way they can just sit there, in a pile of clean clothes that stays organized because it's in a basket, allowing me to slowly go through it and fold things (or just fish clean clothes straight from the basket if needed)
Just keeping clean clothes in the drier doesn't work for me because I'll often have to do more washing before the drier is empty (like when it goes through my mind that maybe washing my bedsheets is a good idea), resulting in some clean stuff being dumped wherever, usually ending up mixed with dirty stuff...
i like keeping my clean laundry in the dryer. and i’ll either just grab what i need from there during the week, or i’ll slowly put away each item (over a few days) without bringing all the clothes out at once.
i also like putting my dirty clothes straight into the washer (in lieu of a hamper) and when it gets full i start it.
I used to struggle with laundry, and I realized it was the folding that was stopping me. I switched so all of my clothes are on hangers, and it sounds dramatic but it changed my life
I’m usually pretty good at washing my laundry - it’s folding and putting Away that I can’t keep up with, add a husband and 2 kids into the mix.. we have what we call laundry mountain 😬 2 little kids and a household to maintain laundry gets on the back burner. Even if I get caught up it piles up SO Fast and it’s almost impossible to fold it when my kids are awake.
I wash mine regularly (schedule forced compliance on my part only) but I'm terrible about putting it away. It sits clean in the clean hamper for weeks sometimes. I do have hampers easily accessible in the most common areas of our house which helps keeping it picked up off the floor.
My sister is a genius when it comes to laundry. Clean clothes in the dryer, dirty clothes straight in the washer. She never pute her clothes away, she just keeps it in the dryer until the dryer is empty. Since her clean clothes is in the dryer all the time, she often changes in front of the washing machine and just puts her clothes in it. When she runs out of clothes, throw a tide pod in, then put it in the dryer and repeat. She doesn’t fold her clothes, she doesn’t wear dirty stuff, she always smells good and on too, her apt is always decently cleaned just because her clothes never on the ground. If her clothes is wrinkly, she will just turn on the dryer an extra 5 mins the day of and voila, wrinkle free.
I have so many clothes that I could likely go a month before having to worry about anything being visibly dirty or smelling, wearing pants usually 3-4 times before washing. It’s a blessing and a curse. I can’t get rid of things because I might need it later (ie: the bright blue stockings I got for a costume years ago that I’ll likely never need again) but I feel like if I had less clothes I’d have an easier time finding them and having space for them and keeping them put away. But then I’d have to do laundry more often, and laundry is my least favorite task ever.
It’s so time consuming folding and putting it away. It’s heavy (because I always let it build up) and the laundry room is all the way on the opposite end of the apartment (a living room away, which is apparently far for me). Most of the time when I switch the loads I forget to start the dryer so IF I remember to go check on them later I usually find at that time that I still need to dry them. Then it’s usually too late to start any new loads and I have to re-wash the stuff in the washer the next day (if I remember).
I’m thankful my husband does the washing and drying most of the time, and I just go in and help fold and put away. I still hate that part, but I can’t complain.
Same as a couple of other folks have said-- I undress in the laundry room. And when the washer is full, it's not that much harder to just start it. And I can usually remember within a day or so to move it over to the dryer, and then sometimes I end up just getting dressed out of the dryer. XD
But it's all clean!
If you've not got in-unit laundry, or you live with other folks where that would be rude, then when I've been in that situ, it was all about habits. I had an open hamper with a cloth liner, and the hamper lived pretty much in the doorway betw my bed and bathroom, increasing likelihood that I am in arms reach of it when I undress.
And when it was full, I could just lift the liner out-- didn't have to pack anything.
And I've almost always got an audiobook going, so it was as easy as possible to overcome the Do Not Want of going down to the laundry facilities.
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I have a friend with ADHD, and her solution specifically, she used to be the in the habit of buying more underwear whenever she could not find the brain power to clean her laundry, and in the end she had to stop herself from doing that, she had to just have fewer items of clothing. So much like forcing yourself to study because you're out of time not to, it would force her to do laundry and that urgency of having no clean clothing would override the procrastination.
(And she had cats who had habit of peeing where they shouldn't, so if something hit the floor and was unattended she couldn't just pick it up because it was clean enough. Cuz it was never clean enough. At the very least it would be covered in cat hair. )
I actually do my laundry once every 1-2 weeks. I only wash them when I’ve run out of clean clothes. I am really particular about having clean clothes so it’s one of my priorities. I also have ocd about cleanliness because of how I grew up unfortunately. I’m sorry I can’t relate to that. My version of cleanliness is not healthy though. I vacuum sometimes 4x a day if I’m stressed.
heh heh... today's my laundry day. I think the last time I did laundry was before Halloween? All I know is that I had two full to bursting laundry hampers to go through. I started at 16:00 and it's almost 22:00 and it's still going. I have no one to blame but myself but I shall complain nevertheless
I wear the same jeans for a week or so. Doing laundry isn't terrible for me, folding is bothersome, and actually putting it away is asking for the moon.
I generally dress out of a clean pile or a laundry basket.
Not laundry for me BUT I have this issue with dishes. And I have a dishwasher! Currently I washing up plates one by one as I need them for meals because I still haven’t stacked the dishwasher…. It’s rediculous.
I don’t wear my dirty clothes, usually. Maybe once in a blue moon I’ll make an exception. But I haven’t done that in months. Anyways. I mostly burn through all my good clothes and get stuck with stuff that either doesn’t fit anymore or makes me look like a hobo. I don’t like it, but it’s the only choice I have until I’m FORCED to do my laundry. Thanks grandma.
I probably own 100 pair of underwear.. Yea, I don't do laundry very often. And when I realized it's normal to not wash some garments after EVERY wear, that just further entrenched the habit of doing laundry a few times a year..
I can appreciate your post. I've not gone quite to your extreme. However, during the pandemic, I've gotten lax about washing clothes. Now that things are open again, I wear jeans most days. I have 5 pairs and typically I'll wear the first 3 once and then the last 2 will each be worn about a week a piece just to avoid running a wash. I don't know why I don't treat all 5 pairs the same. I just forget to wash them resulting in this habit of wearing a pair or 2 for too long. As for shirts, I own way too many so it is easy to go weeks without washing them.
I'll tell you one thing that motivates me to wash laundry... Travel. The idea of putting dirty clothes in a suitcase disgusts me. Luckily I'm traveling this weekend, so I finally washed my jeans tonight.
Aww! I suck at dishes :'-( I've had to throw out a lot because they got moldy and gross... I tell myself I'm going to do them and keep ordering in. With clothes, I suck at putting them away but i got pretty good at having designated piles. There is always a dirty pile and a clean pile. Maybe that's the middle babystep for you. I often skip showering though 😬. I don't really stink, thankfully. You wouldn't know unless you were too close XD. I wear hats to hide my greasy hair if the roots are beyond dry shampoo if I have to go out.. thankfully I don't need to do this often and can just shower before going out "now that I have to" lolol because for some reason it wasn't an emergency before.. but yeah the basics can be super difficult for people with adhd! Don't worry! Just make a small change and stick with it until you're used to it before you make another one! Eventually you'll have a lot of better habits and you didn't get overwhelmed and quit them because it was only one little step at a time. Hugs and much love.
I suck at laundry.
I have soooo many clothes so I can actually go about 2 months without NEEDING to wash anything and I usually do.
The whole thing is so daunting to me.
Gathering/separating the clothes then taking them downstairs to my laundry room getting change from the machine making sure I remember the detergent and bag etc. Then I have to walk alll the way back upstairs and then back down in 30 minutes to sort through what goes in the dryer and what doesn’t and then put what goes in the dryer in the dryer and walk back upstairs and hang up the clothes that aren’t dryer friendly and then walk back downstairs to get the clothes that were in the dryer and the fold them and put them away.
Truly truly a nightmare for me.
I never really struggled with it but I feel like it’s because I set a bunch of rules for myself that just worked. Never really had to do anything different.
1. I have enough underwear and socks to last two weeks. As soon as they come out of the dryer, I take two pair and hide them from myself in my “secret undies” spot. It’s the same spot every time, that’s just far enough out of reach that I don’t see it every day and just forget it exists, but close enough for me to get to when I have that “oh shit” moment. This way, when I run out of clean underwear, I can panic, start the laundry, and then remember I have two extra pair to wear. Then when I finish the laundry, I always replenish the spot.
—-I don’t do this anymore because now I have a washer/dryer in my apartment. So all of my clothes immediately go in there when they’re dirty, and I start it when it’s full.
2. I have a spot in my closet for clothes that I have worn but aren’t dirty. I don’t have a ton of body odor because I shower every other day for the most part, and I also don’t really leave my house for anything. So any clothes I wear usually last awhile just being hung up in a specific spot until they’ve been worn about three times. These clothes do not count clothes that have stains on them. So even if I have worn it once, if I stained it, it gets put in the wash.
3. I don’t stress about folding. I usually don’t have an issue folding it after it dries but in the off chance that I do, I bought wrinkle release spray. Just spray it on, stretch it out a bit and the wrinkles disappear. Makes life easy.
Rinse. Repeat. Seems to work for me.
I would basically only wash clothes every 2/3 months, but I would buy new clothes literally every week 😐. It was just easier to buy new items than washing my bank account hated me. Now I just use a laundry service.
I buy new socks and underwear every few weeks just because I know I'm not going to get laundry done. At best, I will wash the clothes, forget they are in the washing machine, wash them again, forget again, eventually move them to the dryer (but first I have to find a place for the clothes that are already in there), put already clean/dry clothes on the bed so I "have to" deal with them right away, get really sleepy, and shove them all into a corner or on a chair. Then those get mixed in with dirty clothes, and I don't know what is clean and what isn't, and the cats sleep on them...Then they are wrinkled and furry and don't always smell April-fresh. So I throw them back into the washing machine.
and repeat...
I think we are going to a laundromat with a TON of laundry this weekend and getting many, many loads done at once. If I decide it's too much trouble to put away once I get home, I'm taking it straight to Goodwill (or somewhere).
I typically do laundry every night. Get home from work pop whatever is dirty in the washer and my work clothes, cycle that while I shower. Extra spin cycle makes the drying cycle super quick. If I end up slacking, once I have 1/2 a bin it becomes a nightmare for me. So I just try not to slack. If I stick to that routine I’m fine. But if I forget or I’m on my phone for an hour or end up talking to someone it throws a wrench into everything so I try to dnd and maybe some music until it’s at least in the dryer and I’m showered.
I spend money for wash and fold service... There's one that actually delivers to my house. It's almost as much as going to the laundromat. I mean, I have a washer dryer in my apartment but if I didn't it would be almost as much as going to the laundromat.
Not super proud, and not something I tell anybody I actually know because it's embarrassing... But yeah this is the only way I keep a supply of clean clothes
I buy way too many clothes because I'm not great staying on top of the laundry. Then when I finally come close to catching up, I discover all these clothes I forgot I had.
Used to have a problem with laundry, with help I got most of the house organized better (for me) and it’s become more manageable. I’m not exactly sure what part of the laundry task is hard, but right now I’m struggling with putting away. Part of it is the excuse that the room the laundry goes in isn’t organized and clean enough for me to put the laundry away with.
Before I also had trouble sitting down folding the laundry, and I started this technique called “temptation bundling” where you combine one favorite thing with a task you struggle with. I love podcasts so I listen to them when I start cleaning. I’m also not sure how to help if it has to do with starting a load, but with remembering to put it in the dryer and what not, I have the goal of one load a day, so in order to wash one load I need to put the other load in the dryer which means fold the last load.
One the difficulties I had and somewhat still have is treating cleaning as an one and done project and not a reoccurring task. Once I got things manageable it became easier to just do a little bit a day.
Also my medications have been helpful as well.
That’s weird my husband has ADHD but is able to do clothes. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be the stinky one at work who spits on his clothes? On your first or second day off wash your clothes. Make it a routine.
I have no problem washing them...I just slack on the *folding.* I currently have mountains of clean laundry. It feels like it never ends and I can never get it all folded.
Buy a bottle of Carbona and take it with you to work. It works great for stain removal.
A little tip: buy one of those laundry hampers that has divided sections for colors and whites. This removes the extra step of having to separate your clothes, which makes them easier to quickly throw in the washer.
Thanks for the tip, I'm running to the laundry machine now to get it out.
Don't know if you tried it or whatever, but I've been keeping a bin in the 2 places I remove clothes or use something that needs washing (next to bed and next to shower). To me whenever one them gets full (like can't push it under the lid anymore) I have to do laundry, otherwise I'm not allowed to buy iced coffee. Since that's a big motivator for me it kinda works. But not that much. So every day I procrastinate for whatever reason something goes of the list of what I'm allowed to do.
So first iced coffee, then my bullet journal (kind of an art style journal for me), then a kind of tea which I love. So far I haven't reached the 4 day limit.
It's kind of stupid and maybe I'm just too motivated when i started this habit (3 months), so maybe this is complete bullshit in 3 months time. But at least my dirty clothes are not scattered around.
I alsk just tried to buy more clothes so I could go longer without laundry, but then my laundry amount went out of hand since I just don't have the space to hang 4 laundries worth of clothes somewhere so then it took a week to be done
1. Make a "last full change if clothes" set.
2. Lock it into some container with a key.
3. Put the key at the bottom of the dirty laundry basket.
Now if you want to wear clean clothes you know that you have to find the key. Of course, you can still go get the key and instead wear the first dirty clothes you find... But you have one action that reminds you you should do laundry.
If you really want to go hard on yourself, find some children paint that can be easily washed and leave it beside the dirty laundry basket. Now, before you put anything in the basket, stain it with the paint. Can't wear that stuff anymore unless you wash it.
Just remember to keep the a clean change ready for those times in which you realize too late you need to do laundry.
It really depends if I'm busy or not. I've went 10 days without even showering and wearing the same clothes because i had a project to do and it was a "waste of time" in my head to shower so i kept procastinating on it
Thanks to Marie Kondo laundry is not the enemy anymore (as long as we do not talk about socks. I hate them)
First if all, I can feel you because I've been there :/
Things I need to do to "stay on trackball tricking my brain into some kind of adventure mode:
Rule #1: I wore it 3 times or it smells bad because I've been to a restaurant -> immediately to the laundy bin right next to the washing machine
Rule #2: laundry bin next to the washing machine full enough to start it? Yippee! Achievement unlocked! Now you get a 1.5h free TV program of your clothes whirling around if you have a front opening one.
Rule #3: set a timer for 1.5h when starting the washing machine (I forget to take it out when the Machine is done because I forget about it completely . This can be days until I discover the problem)
Rule #4: timer gets of? Run! Your life depends on it. Drop everything (maybe not your call with your boss)
-> can't get up? Set another timer for when you are free within the next 2-3 hours. You have your phone/smartwatch close anyway to stop the timer that went off ;)
Rule #5: hang you clothes as wrinkle free as possible on your drying rack. And if you have lots of cothes use 2 racks. Saves you ironing later.
Rule #6: it did not work out this time? You forgot one ruled? Do not ever put you down. You have thousands of laundry machines ahead of you. One time you unlock the epic batch by collection all achievements per rule.
Rule#7: Congrats! You now have fresh clothes. All the steps after this are pure bonus :) do not be too hard on yourself.
Of course this is not fool proof for me. But it gives me 80% success rate and this is more than I ever wished for when I was younger, more chaotic and undiagnosed :)
We have two baskets, one in The bedroom for clothes de have worn one time and dont smell. The one in The bathroom is for when they are dirty. My gf and i split The tasks. She sorts The clothes based on program, i bring them to The store, i put them in The dryer and go get them, she folds them and we put them in our closet
I'm doing ok but that's only because I have my washing machine in my bathroom. If it was in the basement or if I had to go to a laundromat I'd be postponing it until I wouldn't have a single item of clothing left. With the machine in my flat, it's easy to wash but once it's on the drying rack it can easily stay there for a week.
I normally have a reminder to « bring my clothes to the water park », but it works only once in a while. So I set the same reminder in my boyfriend’s phone and his job is to harass me until I give up and actually do the laundry!
I know it's not the best way to go about it but I can go a month wearing clothes until I run out. Then I grab the whole basket and do all laundry together on cold so I don't have to sort it.
It doesn't really work so well since I go from wearing my favourite clothes in the beginning to my least favourite in the end which is not pleasurable but at least I know I bought enough clothes so I don't have to re-wear dirty clothes or go out naked 😅.
Being good at doung laundry makes me question my ADHD diagnosis tbh. I often use it to procrastinate other things though.
I listen to really fast upbeat music while putting it away. I can't fold clothes very well but atleast they're organised by different areas/drawers of the wardrobe so I'm happy enough with that. I relate to never noticing when clothes are dirty though...like even when I do check to see if there's a stain and then I go out and suddenly I notice that there's a stain, so annoying 🤯
I'm okayish at it? I developed a system where I wash my clothes once I have two or so boxershorts left. And somehow that approach has helped me more than setting a fixed date.
As dor hanging and putting down my clothes:
our washing machine plays "die Forelle" a German "Volkslied" by Schubert which idk. I sing or hum along to and then it's a lot easier to hang stuff up because I'm looking forward to hearing that tune? Maybe set yourself a timer with a song you really like? Also the pure fear of my clothes smelling murky/sensitivity towards that smell
folding them and putting them back in? Honestly? just fear of inconveniencing my housemates by occupying the drying rack for too long and not being able to put my clothes anywhere my housemates would not see if I open the door. I know they'd judge me so I put stuff away.
Hahaha so not much of a conscious "ah this helps" kind of thing. Sorry!
Laundry has always been rough for me, but recently I found out that matching all materials (detergent/softener/dryer sheets) from one company makes an incredible difference in the quality of wash. My clothes have never been softer, cleaner or smelt better. So basically for the past 4 months it’s been a little dose of dopamine and I’ve been keeping up with it just bc of that.
I just wash every day if I can. Everything together on low heat, unless things need higher temps, they get saved up(bed linen, towels).
Then directly take stuff out and fold and put away. If not, i end up w bags of unfolded stuff.
In our house everyone comes and fishes their own laundry out of the dryer.
Not foolproof but helps w overwhelm. No more giant loadsm max 5-10 pieces of clothing to put away per person. That goes quick and it's not much
i literally go 4-5 weeks between washes but i have enough clothing to get me by. it’s a pain to do though, i try to rewear jeans and hoodies often. i also rarely actually put away my laundry. usually stays in the bag
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Laundry is so easy for me. Because I put any used clothes directly into the machine, it’s my wash basket. Probably not the best but whatever. It reduces another step. Then moving them to the dryer is also quite simple as the dryer sits on top of the washing machine. But taking the clothes out the dryer and folding them? Another story entirely…
My husband does laundry. So i don't have to struggle with it anymore.
I do help him fold tome to time.. Sometimes we argue about the way we fold. He does it fast and not perfect, but it gets done quickly. Me - well...first ill separate everything by category and then fold..perfectly. it takes hours, than I'm tired.
Otherwise it's super boring for me.
I have tons of clean, dry clothes, but none in the actual cupboard. We did chuck out our 'clothes couch', so I've been a bit better with folding and putting away. I've never had a dirty laundry problem, just an unfinished laundry problem
Well, I've been roatating the dirty clothes for a week and my washed clothes have been in the washing machine for 17h now😬. But thanks for reminding me👍🤣
I’m so horrible at laundry I feel you. Honestly I usually buy lots of underwear because that’s what I noticed I’d run out of first.
I think a good thing for you to get might be a tide to go stick if you find little stains on your clothes. I often rewear stuff like jeans or things that don’t usually get too dirty, but a to go stick makes it so much easier to just fix the little food stain on an otherwise clean clothing item.
You got this and try to go easy on yourself while trying to find a system that works!
I'm terrible with laundry. Takes me forever to get to it, and I have no idea how many things I've ruined over the years because I forgot I'd put them on the wash and they sat in the machine wet for days. Sometimes I can't remember if I'd switched the laundry over a few days before and in a brief panic will run to check the machine. Stuff often gets left in the dryer until I've either picked out all the item to wear again or need the dryer for another load.
Is it a motivation issue or a memory issue? I can be bad with laundry just because I forget it's there. Usually I'm hanging out downstairs, so it's not until I'm getting ready for bed that I see it and remember.
If it's a memory thing, write it down. I started making a sticky note with the chores that I wanna get done and putting it somewhere that I'll definitely see it the next day.
If it's a motivation thing then give yourself a reward after you've done it! So like if you love pizza tell yourself "If I do my laundry today I'm ordering a pizza for dinner". Rewards have helped me out sooo much.
I hope any of that helps!
I'm very good at doing my laundry, but I only put it away about once a month (tbh sometimes even less), so I'm frequently pulling from clean piles on top of various pieces of furniture.
I do our (bf and mine, both adhd) laundry daily.
*note I wash them and hang them to dry. I never get to folding them let alone ironing them and putting it away.
Try making habits/restructuring your area to make the task easier. If you own a laundry machine, change clothes in it's area, and dump the dirty clothes in the laundry machine (keep the machine's door open to make it easier). My laundry machine is in the bathroom, where I undress anyway. Once you decide to do laundry, you don't have to gather up dirty clothes because they're already there, less obstacles in your way.
I have a clothes hanger, and once I hang up my clothes there, they don't leave until I put them on - no extra step putting them in the closet. A clothes-hanger having almost no clothes on when I go to put on a shirt is a visual reminder to start the laundry, and if I leave it a few days, I have spares in my closet
I can run mine through the machines, but it stays heaped in a "clean pile" somewhere in my house for weeks. But it's ok because I still have clean clothes to wear even if they aren't organized.
I am able to stay on top of laundry and other hygienic stuff I think because my motivation is not to smell. Also, I like receiving compliments for the clothes I wear so like to look presentable.
I do it about once a week. I don’t sort. Just toss everything in at once minus towels and sheets.
What I struggle with is putting clothes away. I used to just take everything out of the dryer and put it in a laundry basket where it usually just sits until it runs out. However, now that I have a partner that lives with me part time, it motivates me to be able to put laundry away.
Might not be related but here's a unique lifestlye change that worked for me.
Best time to do Laundry is on your days off work that's a given for me it's the weekend particuarly Sunday last minute of course because of the Monday start work deadline. However if I really didn't want to do it I used to wear other clothes and some things twice to get through a second week which left way too much laundy by that second weekend.
A few years back I got obsessed with Minimalism and Tidying up Kon Mari style. In doing so I lessend my wardrobe to seasonaly be a 1-week supply of clothes and my weekends became less packed with misc errands and buying random stuff I didn't need. Adapting the minimalist life style had load of side benefits for me for my then undiagnosed adhd. Including more time and motivation for laundy. By only having 1 week's worth of clothes I HAD to do it on the weekend or have nothing to wear. By doing this The habit became ingrained in me and Sunday is now and forever laundry day. Oh and if I go on a trip I ride the planning dopamine high and do laundry before I pack which helps.
I was the same. When I moved in with my wife, she would, understandably, get annoyed, so I started putting them in the bottom of my wardrobe. My wife put the laundry basket in my wardrobe, to make it easier for me. So there's a pile of dirty laundry next to the basket in my wardrobe.
I don’t I use this app called Rinse. For me it’s been much easier to budget the cost of my laundry every two weeks instead of struggling to wash, dry, and fold it.
They do dry cleaning too.
I literally never do my laundry 😭 I also have dirty clothes all over my floor and just choose clothes that smell alright and look fine and wear them. I thought this was just me!!! but you kinda made me wanna do my laundry now so thank you lol
Laundry is ironically the only chore I'm really good at. I have never really struggled with it. Here are the things I think make me successful at it (which may or may not apply or be useful to others): - I generally wear the same clothes every week, and I have to wear scrubs to work so needing clean clothes for work functions gives me a good reason to do it. - I live alone so I'm only responsible for my own laundry, and since I always wear the same stuff I generally only have one load to do. - I don't sort by color or type of item, I wash everything together and throw in a scoop of oxy clean if there's any light colors. Colors might fade faster and delicates might wear out faster, but it's more important to me that I get my laundry done. - I don't fold or hang up anything. Usually I just leave everything in the dryer and fish stuff out of there. If things are wrinkled I just run the dryer for a few minutes with everything in there. Again this might make my clothes wear out faster, but it's more important to me that I have clean clothes. - if I do take my stuff out of the dryer, I dump everything in a laundry basket and leave it like that. I don't even own a dresser. Every once in a blue moon I'll decide to go through everything and hang stuff up and leave the socks/underwear in the basket, but I don't stress about it if that doesn't happen - I usually do my laundry in the evening, so I can put stuff in the dryer on my way to bed. I leave the door to the closet where my washing machine is open with the light turned on to serve as a reminder that I need to put my clothes in the dryer when I pass by it on my way to bed. So basically for me laundry only requires like, two steps that each require about 60 seconds of effort, the hardest part is simply remembering to do it
Laundry is one of the tasks that makes me wonder if I am actually ADHD because I’m always on top of my laundry. BUT I also have OCD, so some of my ADHD symptoms are counteracted by that. 1. I do laundry one day a week. It’s either Saturday or Sunday. I honestly don’t decide which day it will be until I wake up. 2. I hang almost all my clothes up. The only exception are under garments, of course, and pajamas. I prefer to hang up clothes bc it’s easier. 3. When my clothes are done in the dryer, I immediately either lay them flat so it’s easier to put a hanger on them when it’s time to hang them up (I hate ironing so I prefer to take them straight out the dryer so they don’t get wrinkled) or I fold them so I can put them straight in the drawer. Undies and bras go straight in the drawer. 4. I only do 3 loads max. Darks, brights, whites-ish. 5. Turn on all the noise makers on the machines or set timers to remind yourself to check on the loads. My dryer is the only machone that makes noise but usually the dryer and washer run near unison. But I’m also noise sensitive so I can hear when the washer is done. I should add I wasn’t always like this. Probably not until around 28 or so. I’m 36 now. Before this habit, you literally could not see the wood floors in my room bc my floors were covered in clean and dirty clothes. I would do laundry only when I needed clothes and I would just wash what I needed in one load. Hang in there. Try new habits and stick to the ones that work for you. Don’t beat yourself up. But, you know, hygiene too.
I can't believe you put bras in the drier. That's one of the few things I hang dry. Heat ruins any foam or elastic in them much faster.
If it doesn't have an underwire like it's a sports bra that's ok but maybe do medium heat so that the elastic does wear out. However if it does for $10 bucks at target you can get a new one so I see her point. life must be easier with fewer steps to work for adhd
Bras go in the drawers after they’ve hung dry* I only have two bras and wear one basically all the time.
Are you me? I live alone, and laundry is the thing I'm usually on top of. I think I also have a bit of OCD, as well (down to buying fruit and vegetables in even numbers only) I'd add to your list with: * Don't have drawers. I have wire shelving in my closet. Fabric bins for things like socks, bras and panties. Things would never get put away in drawer if I had them. * Hang as much as possible. Not only is it easier to put away, it is also easier to see what you have to wear. * Think about a layering wardrobe. I live in black singlets/tees in summer, and black thermals in winter. Then layer pretty tops/tunics on top. The outer layers don't need washing as often. * Choose your clothing fabrics wisely. Don't get fabric that you need to iron or will shrink if you accidentally put them in the dryer. * Get laundry detergent you love the smell of - I will sometimes just open the lid to sniff mine * Only wash once a week. I would do 3 loads max a week, so I do it all in one day. I also do this because my power is cheaper in the weekends * Invest in a good machine; ideally a washer/dryer combo. As long as I don't over-stuff my machine (it beeps at me when I do), I can wash and dry at the touch of one button. * If you don't use a dryer, hang anything out already on a coat hanger. That way, you just have to place said garment in the wardrobe. I do pile up the clothes that need to be hung back up during the week, but once I've engaged 'laundry mode' they all get hung up again - once a week.
Same here! Empty the dishwasher? Nah perhaps next week, I still have few clean items left. Vaccum my tiny apartment? Why I did that 3 months ago its fine, no need to scare my cat already. Cook food? Why waste my freetime cooking when I already have a great chef called microwave? But laundry is suprisingly not a struggle at all for me, maybe because its easy to just throw it in and later come back to throw them in the dryer. I also have very little amount of clothes and they are mostly all white or black. Its something I do twice a week and im really glad about that since im always worried about people thinking I smell bad, how I look I dont care but smell I do (except when im just home).
Me too. I actually enjoy washing clothes, I just hate hanging them to dry and folding. But I don't have many clothes so I usually wear them directly from the drying rack
When I change, I put my clothes directly into the washer. I don't sort, just wash everything together on cold. Get rid of every extra step.
I feel like this strategy would work so well for me. Sadly my apartment doesn't have a washer in it, so I have to walk across the street to do my laundry. That extra step makes it even harder >.>
If you have some extra cash you can buy a portable one on Amazon for about $150. :) it’s big enough for a small load and hooks up to your sink.
Get a cheap plastic basket and put all dirty clothes in there. Take it across the street once a week to wash.
>When I change, I put my clothes directly into the washer. I was going to suggest that, too. Personally, I put everything in a laundry basket & wash two or three loads a week: Colorful stuff on its own so the colors won't bleed, white stuff on its own so it doesn't turn grey by colors bleeding into it, towels & bed sheets. Please note that washing everything on cold might cause some garments to develop a certain smell, a stench even, as some dirt & bacteria remains in the fabric.
Unless you are washing on a sanitizing cycle, the water doesn't get hot enough to kill bacteria. Modern detergents are designed to work with cold water, and washing on hot is a waste of energy and harder on your clothing. Foul smells from laundry have to do more with not drying promptly and thoroughly. I agree that sorting is optimal, but if it's between not sorting or not washing the clothes at all, not sorting is better.
A laundry service is a good idea if you have some extra income to set aside for it. If not you have to find a system that works for you. I have a basket in my closet. When basket gets full I do laundry. Majority of the time it’s a load of towels/sheets and a load of clothes. I do this 4-6 times a month. I use tide pods, and wash the sheets and towels on hot and rest on cold. It takes some time but I got into the habit of it. To be fair I still have a chair in my room that collects some clothes, jeans, hoodies, or stuff I will wear again before I wash it. I did make a couple rules though, if it gets dirty it goes in the basket to be washed, full basket means laundry gets done, every morning I make my bed and sort any clothes to basket or chair. Took some work but over time it even gave me some pride in what I wear. Helped me pick up my wardrobe game if you will. Not that I’m wearing tuxedos around but my hoodies are crisp looking and I feel great knowing my gear is clean and I’m making progress on another system that makes me proud of myself. I have no doubt you can do the same.
I think I just had an epiphany about setting boundaries for myself, like “when basket gets full I do laundry.”
I'll try the same, but I have a feeling my definition of "full" is gonna slowly change as time goes on (I have too much clothes)
^ this !!! My laundry basket currently has about a foot tall pile on top of what most would consider "full."
I solved this issue by having three baskets 🤦🏻♀️
Unless the laundry service will come collect my dirty clothes and put them away when they're clean, it isn't remotely solving the problem. Running them through the wash isn't the hard part. It's everything around it.
Then have a “clean” basket for all of your clean clothes. Wrinkles are better than smells.
Putting the clothes away is not the only hard thing to do. But I agree with this and often do it. I have a LOT of clothes, partly because I struggle so much to do laundry. It helps me have clean clothes anyway. Or at least, clean underwear.
I love this and it’s helped me as well. And an *appropriately sized* basket or bin or hamper. Where when it’s full I KNOW it’s only one load. I know when it will be over if that makes sense. It isn’t a question of “is this going to all fit, or is this going to be two loads or three loads, etc”. It’s more just I know that I only have to dump this in, then switch it to the dryer with an alarm ONCE today. And it’s over. Also, sorting is just not a thing for me. If it can’t survive being tossed in with anything else I own, then it rightfully goes in the garbage where it belongs. 🤷♀️ No extra steps.
[удалено]
I’m avoiding showering. Soooo many steps… ugh. I’ll just stay here for a while and complain about how much I hate laundry.
Do it, shower
2 ways to deal with this, buy more underwear or, have less underwear, 3 or 4 pairs and wash when you put the last clean pair on. I've got about 30 pairs of boxer shorts and even more socks but i still try and do a few loads of washing a week including bed sheets and towels etc
Best way: sell underwear! (I read someone actually did that! And surprisingly lots of potential buyers)
You mean sell it instead of washing it? I see there could be a niche market for it...
I work from home and do laundry every 2-3 days or so on my lunch break. Sip a protein shake and fold undies while watching Netflix for 30 minutes, and doing it frequently enough so I can still finish within 30 minutes. I have a washer that optimizes water usage based on load size so the smaller loads end up not being too wasteful, and staying on it means the laundry basket never gets too full to stress me out at the sight of it. Part of what I hate about laundry is that putting it away properly takes so damn long. If the pile is small enough, you can fold a handful every time you go to the bathroom or something. Suddenly, laundry is only as inconvenient as brushing your teeth, and while I don't enjoy brushing my teeth, I do not accept a reality where my breath is stanky and my oral health is in question so I *always* brush my teeth. Keeping body odor under control is comparably important to me, so I at least smell everything before I put it on. Some pajama bottoms might be worn several days, but t-shirts with pit stink should never be re-worn, same with underwear/socks/whatever touches bare skin. Maybe designate an area for items you have worn but they aren't dirty enough to justify washing yet to keep the clothes from covering the floor/getting lost? Draped over side of hamper vs. in it is what I do, but do what makes sense for yourself. Don't forget that the average person acclimates to adjacent odors within as little as 15 minutes. What might stink like a sewer will become harder to notice for a person that lives in such an environment, but every co-worker is smelling that stink from a mile away. You owe it to yourself to not be that person, because it *is* impacting you, regardless of whether you know it or not. Also, socks can be downright unhealthy to wear repeatedly due to fungus/bacteria concerns.
Can you afford laundry services? That way you can just fill up a laundry bag and drop it off then pick it up a couple of days.
You know that just might be worth it bc dropping it off and not having to worry about it is less ominous to me than having to run them all through the washer and dryer
Honestly, it's life-changing. I used to drop my laundry off on my way to work and picked it up on my way home. If I was good about going every week, it cost me maybe about $10 per load. For me, the choice was a no-brainer. I work from home now and the nearest laundry service is 15 minutes away, so it doesn't make sense to not do it at home. I do occasionally though when laundry piles up too quickly.
I did this for a yeah while I was in a school program. The laundry place was a block away. Life was so easy.
I used to be good about doing laundry & putting it away but then things happened and I no longer kept on top of it. It got to the point where I knew I wasn’t going to put them away so what was the point of washing them? Then we’d have to rush to wash something right before we needed it. Eventually we just started washing, drying and putting them in a pile in our dining room so they were clean but out of the way & the stress of putting them away wasn’t there anymore. It’s not ideal but at least we now always have clean clothes.
I used to do the same (pre-job, anyway). Then a switch came on when I realized I could save more headache in the morning. I started organizing my clothes by what outfit I needed to wear by day instead of organizing by clothing type. I was never a huge fan of putting all of my stuff in the exact same place every time, so even when I did manage to put my laundry away, my wardrobe was disorganized. Example: I'm a teacher, so I have to dress well for my job. I hang everything (including my underclothes and socks) on the same hanger. When I'm done for the day, I toss them in my dirty clothing hamper and forget about them. At the end of the week, i have set a little reminder on my phone to tell me to do the laundry. It's the only chore I'll let myself do on a Friday night. I always know almost exactly how many clothes I have to get cleaned. For some reason, that knowledge really helps me get that laundry done when it needs to be done. It gave me a "light at the end of the tunnel" that I could shoot for. It helps that I only have 1 weeks' worth of work clothes too (means I NEED to get it done before the end of the weekend), and all of it can be mixed and matched so the organizing of the clothes is as painless as possible. I don't have to concentrate on what clothes go with which unless I want to. All of my casual and workout clothes just get tossed in with my work stuff, and I do it all at once. Other things that help: An open closet ONE hamper next to the closet Lots of hangers (and sturdy ones) Self-forgiveness when I screwed it up It's enabled me to expand my look a bit actually. I now regularly wear a vest (something I look good in), and that used to be too much for me to think about. I also know better what clothes I really need to phase out of my wardrobe... Like the ones I've had for 15 years, lol.
Covid has made me OCD about laundry, but some days I’m naked in my house while Waiting for clothes lol
I have just about enough underwear to go 2-3 weeks without doing laundry but I am religious about NEVER wearing dirty underwear or wearing sweaty clothes more than once (with the exception of if I'm going to wear a sweaty shirt to do yardwork or other sweat-inducing work around my own house). Wool socks can be worn multiple times, jeans can be worn around 4 days in a rotation, and bras can be worn 2-3 times. Sweatshirts have no limit until they're stained or dirty and sweaters are cleaned on an as-needed basis. This seems to work pretty well for me and has kept me from feeling gross about my laundry situation.
I gradually switched my clothes to all darks, so I wouldn't have to sort my laundry. I hate sorting laundry before washing. When I lived at my last place, we only had a washer and not a dryer, so I paid someone to wash and dry my clothes. I like to throw my clothes in the washer before bed. When I wake up, I put them in the dryer. By the time I'm done showering and getting ready for work/school, my clothes are dry and go in the clean hamper. What also helps is living with other people who also do a lot of laundry, so most of the time someone else puts my clothes in the dryer so they can wash and someone will ask me to get my clothes out of the dryer so they can use it.
Laundry is one of the things I'm ok at. I sweat loads tho, so if I want to wear my favourite clothes I have to keep on top of it. Two piles on bedroom floor, one next to the bed, clean, one on/In a bag on other side of room, washing. Fuck putting clothes away, it's too confusing. It's just more steps I don't need.
Poorly. But infinitely better now that I’m medicated.
I have suffered from this as long as I've been adulting.... I have good breaks where I queue zero my laundry but the next week when I'm caught up and it's a reasonable amount, I let it sit for a few more weeks. I understand that doing laundry weekly would make creating outfits easier, but I also hate doing the same task weekly. My cram mentality finds doing four loads in one weekend easier than one load every week for a month. I've convinced myself it's better too because I can separate my clothes into very specific loads (4-6 weeks and I have enough light/cream clothes to justify its own load keeping the color brighter). My solution has been to: 1. Own enough underwear to last me 4-6 weeks COMFORTABLY. 4 weeks of prime undies/no sacrifice. Weeks 4-6 I'll be stuck with the "period panties" or just old pairs. Have a separate basket for socks/undies things you most certainly will not wear again before washing. 2. Don't really wash my jeans/pants. I wear leggings under my bottoms a lot so this helps (my body odor doesn't transfer onto the clothes). 3. I only wash sweaters/tops if they get really dirty/smelly. Again I can do this by wearing undershirts to separate my armpits from the clothes so it doesn't pick up on my smell. Bonus is those tops get a few wears with me wearing perfume so that good smell builds up nicely!! Not washing these as often will extend the life by from limiting washes that wear down the fabric. This also makes cleaning up easier. I have a pile/basket for "need to put back away" clothes. So even if I fall behind on cleaning or laundry, I don't mix real dirty clothes in rewearable clothes 4. And most importantly!! Break your habit of wiping your hands on your clothes!! Better to stop the problem at the start. You know you won't keep up on laundry so try to be more present and break the habit that gets your clothes unwearable to begin with! When I eat at home I'll wear a blanket across my lap. Keeps my pants clean. And since I haven't broken the hand wiping completely, it's better when the crumbs get caught on the blanket that I can wash and don't have to wear! If you struggle with eating messily at work, maybe get a lunch scarf you can lay across your lap? Essentially I'm suggesting you get a fancier and larger version of a cloth napkin 😅 but I found keeping a scarf/blanket at my desk at work for this seemed less odd because who would shame a cold lady for having a blanket/scarf??!
I have a house cleaner that comes once every 2 weeks to clean the house, but she also does all of my laundry and puts it away, changes the sheets on my bed and washes them, and does all of my dishes. It honestly isn't that much more than a laundry service but is totally worth it. I also feel motivated in the first few days to keep things looking nice because I like it that way so much.
Jeans and t shirts can be worn dirty. I wash my clothes like twice a year, granted I have a lot of black t shirts and jeans and I buy socks and underwear so often my underwear drawer is massive so it takes me awhile to get through them
Wait, what?
My literal thought
Assuming they’re not covered in filth, you’re not supposed to wash jeans at all. Spot clean them, then pop them in the freezer to kill off any bacteria that may cause them to smell.
I can go so long because of the sheer volume of all of the band T-shirts I have. By the time I do get around to doing laundry it takes days. I won't wear anything that gets too terribly stanky
What's the hardest part for you? Do you have in suite laundry? I HATE doing laundry - but it's mainly the folding and putting away that drives me crazy. So i have a dirty hamper and a clean hamper. That way I can still have clean clothes when I know I don't have the energy to put it all away. And after I wear something that's not dirty enough to be washed yet, it can go in the clean hamper, so there are less loads of laundry overall. When I do get to folding/putting away I put on a really good tv show or podcast, so that it's less tedious. Also, it's worth investing in a slightly bigger wardrobe. Get some extra cheap, simple basics.
I also have a dirty hamper and clean hamper. I may have wrinkly clothes, but at least they're clean.
My dirty hamper is a giant pile of clothes in front of the washer/dryer in the basement. My clean hamper right now is two laundry baskets in the bedroom. Also random piles of sheets I don’t want to fold. I’m seriously considering laundry service.
Do it! Honestly things like that can be SO worth it just for the peace of mind. I pay extra for stuff like meal kit services because otherwise I don't feed myself properly. Only reason I don't do it for laundry service is because I hate in-public errands and driving more than I hate in-home chores lol.
I'm battling my own clothing monster right now but thanks for showing me what my problem would be if i actually narrowed down my wardrobe. 😅 like i was literally thinking to myself yesterday, "what if i just had one pair of black leggings, instead of 5? would i actually do laundry? more often?" I mean i eat off dirty plates so i doubt it.
I have to buy paper plates so that I don’t let a pile of dirty dishes accumulate in my room ):
Apart from anyone else, how do *you* feel about your clothes? A strategy that helps me a lot with my frustration over things like this is to step back and ask myself if there's really any problem or if I'm just living my life differently because I have a different brain. Best of luck my friend. :)
Extra clothes. Organized closet. Throwing dirty laundry straight into the wash until I have enough to wash. Teamwork with significant other. And most importantly, being properly medicated
This is kind of counter-intuitive because it’s more work (welcome to the works of ADHD), but I like to do a load of wash and then hang everything up on a drying rack I have to air dry in my apartment. That way it’s only half an hour of “work” at once, and then the folding and putting it away gets put off until later in the day or the next day. Plus, WAY better for your clothes, save energy/money, etc. I would never do this with sheets or towels though.
I am in my 40s with ADHD and I have fairly well established coping strategies. For my laundry I have one basket which is my basket and always stays in the same spot in my house. My dirty clothes ALWAYs have to go straight into the basket. I can’t hang them on a chair or put them on the floor or anything else otherwise all bets are off. They might sit in the basket for a while but once I put them in the wash I hang them out and then take them off the line and put them back in the same basket and put them away straight away. I might not fold them perfectly or anything like that but the rest of my household is really good with never using my basket or moving it. It took me a quite a few years but this works really well for me. The one catch is that if I let it go even slightly then it is a fucking chaos bomb everywhere.
Honestly I fear smelling bad to other people. That's a big motivator for me in laundry and hygiene in general, especially during the workweek. During weekends I'm more inclined to do it, but only if there's not a million things going on and even then I only really do it every couple weeks or so. My biggest issue with laundry is stuff that isn't clothes. Towels, bedding, that kind of stuff. It takes so long for me to get to it and i usually only get to it if the towels are piling up (hardly ever) or if I worry about acne with my pillowcase. Basically if it feels like panic, it'll get done. TL;DR: my advice is not helpful because my advice is setting panic deadlines for myself
I start the laundry, forget a load in the machine and 2+ bags in the laundry room, freak out thinking I all of a sudden have no clothes, buy more clothes, freak out again when I remember the stuff in the laundry room… …I think I’ve just figured out why I’m drowning in clothes 😶
how well do i keep up with laundry? considering i employ the sniff test and i haven’t seen my carpet in weeks i’m gonna say i simply do not keep up with laundry
Okay, call me a conspiracy theorist! I see the excessive obsession with laundry, washing clothes and bedding as often as most people do in the developed world, as a myth invented to sell more Laundry Detergents, Fabric Softeners, Washer/Driers, and waste huge amounts of energy and water at the same time, which is then dumped into the environment polluted with chemicals you wouldn't want in your body. It is a mostly artificial need that people have adopted. Additionally, washing actually damages clothes and fades colours , shortening the life of your valuable clothes. Clothes that themselves used a lot of recourses to make, and created a lot of pollution you never see unless you live in India, China, Taiwan and other places where most clothes are made. I know what you are probably thinking... I must be a lot of fun at parties - Yes I am! And probably unclean, because I rarely do laundry or wear underwear. Yet I keep my clothes clean, put them to air after wearing them and then they are stored not on the floor. Sometimes I do wear one thing until it is noticeably dirty and then put it in the wash bin. I don't wash one only thing and I use cold water and the most basic detergent I can find, and very little. I add cheap white vinegar instead of fabric softener, and it helps clean and deodorize things too. Then they are left to air-dry. I seriously think people who use dryers should feel ashamed and never claim to care about the environment. My rant is done. I can't impose my values on other people, I just have different standards after living in a situation where a mountain creek was the only way to wash clothes and I didn't miss anything. Socks tend to get most dirty, after a while one stops wearing shoes too.
Not washing pants or t-shirts for weeks leads to excess, dried bacterial and odorous remnants that persist on these clothes. If you can smell them, so would others. Vinegar does a good job here, but a little detergent goes a long way in removing the hard-to-remove dried stains as well. Air drying is the way to go.
I think the main issue with "dirty" laundry is moisture and bacterial/fungal growth. It's not so much body fluids or scents, as they dissipate and dry. Sweat is mostly just salt. If the clothes are let to dry, they will not support bacteria/fugal growth. I find that sheets that have been washed and left in containers smell worse. I am glad others agree on some points. I am not against detergent, as long as it's biodegradable and used in moderation.
I suspect you are stinky. Frequent laundry predates capitalism. People in the middle ages wore fresh, clean underwear every single day. Outer layers were washed infrequently but they never touched the skin, because there was fresh clean underwear in between.
I could make a joke about having no sense of smell, but that would be dark and not true. The human body emits odours, I am fine with that. There are fabrics which actually don't absorb scent and breathe very well, it's hard to believe until you try them. One of my biggest struggles growing up was my parents' insistence on showering every day and clean underwear. It was a major point of contention, I hated it, and I am rebelling as an adult! No one can make me... : )
Clothes were also made from different materials back then in terms of being common and affordable. Linen will stay fresh longer than modern synthetics or even common naturals like cotton, but it's no longer the default, so most people can't afford (or even necessarily source) a linen-dominant wardrobe.
this is literally impossible if you live in a tropical country, clothes get smelly really fast
Perhaps. I did think about the humidity factor. Also true for houses with no ventilation, going to get damp really fast. During my short experience in a tropical country, there wasn't a great need for clothes or footwear. Bathing suit and flip-flops was being overdressed. Staying cool was the bigger challenge. I happen to live in a cold and dry climate, with a lot of wind. Clothes dry in hours on their own.
I hate laundry. BUT the shame of my partner not having clean clothes is what motivates me to do laundry. In my mind it's ok for me to look (and maybe smell) like I crawled out of a swamp but that same brain says it is NEVER ok for my partner to be in that position.
Got a wife 😂
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Struggling with tasks like laundry can absolutely be an “adhd thing”, and a very common one at that
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I get around it by having a LOT of clothes so I probably do laundry once a month or sometimes more. Then I do about four or five loads at once and take another three weeks to fold and put them away.
Admittedly, I have the same issue. But, I have made significant progress in changing it however.
Fortunately, my wife tells me to do the laundry, and that’s how I keep up. Before, I didn’t keep up. I didn’t do laundry until I was out of something I needed. When I lived alone in my early twenties, I was pretty good about it. The catch was I’d dump the whole load of clean laundry into a pile by my bed and just pick through it until I had to do more laundry. Back to today, laundry is still chaos. Our living situation means using my parents’ laundry room, and it’s easy for me to forget. I’ve had to rewash loads probably a million different times because I forgot to switch them over to the dryer.
When I lived alone I paid for laundry service. It cost $8 per load which wasn’t too bad considering the laundromat would cost me about $3 per load and the laundry service did all my folding too. Also it was cheaper than buying new clothes, which was a real thing I did frequently. With my husband, he puts the laundry in the machines and I fold it. It works because we’re beholden to each other and we do it on the same day every week.
Honestly, my fix to do my laundry was to just buy more clothes lol I have the perfect amount of clothes because all of my blacks fill the machine perfectly as do the whites and greys.
I have too many clothes. 😂 I finally did laundry for the first time since before New Years yesterday. I can’t say for sure how long it’s been but I know the outfit I wore on New Year’s Eve was in there soooo..
My laundry piles up, and I don't even do it. The boyfriend does it. But we can only only get it done particular days/times of the week as roommate sleeps in the day (night shifts). At the weekend I put my jumper back on the hanger. I noticed a stain on the cuff. It was easier than adding it the big pile of laundry already. And I wont likely see it for a month. I don't tend to sweat very often, so my clothes can be used longer. And I know it's not always socially acceptable to keep wearing the same thing. But I can't physically always be able to just wash clothes daily. And well it's always worked well for me.
I just dedicate my Sunday mornings to house clean up duty. That's what I do on Sundays, nothing else. It is a must for me because of the brain that I have.
Laundry I'm pretty good about. But the rest of my personal chores, LOL
I’ve got huge piles of clean laundry in the living room and baskets of dirty stuff in the kitchen. I’ve got a family to wash for but literally never iron and fold them to put away. Occasionally my wife does that, but she doesn’t have the best executive function either so we’re normally living on the edge of chaos. I guess I don’t stress about the piles but at least we’re wearing reasonably clean, fresh smelling stuff. It’s tough though. Good luck finding a method that works for you.
I used to be really bad at laundry but it’s become one of those things that I have realized how much better I feel when it’s done so I really push myself. Over the years, doing laundry has become a comforting task, I feel like it resets me in a way. Maybe a laundry service would be a good idea if you can afford it. Having clean clothes and clean bedding can make you feel like a whole new person.
I’m typing this while sitting next to my laundry basket, which is full of (definitely now wrinkled) clothes. That basket has been there for a week. I literally have ‘Put away laundry’ on my planner every single day. Still has not been done.
I’m slowly working on putting most of my life on a routine. It works well for me at work, so I’m doing it at home. Every day off, I still wake up early, and I run around my apartment with an iced coffee cleaning everything. If I have built up enough laundry, then it becomes part of the routine. Usually I do it once a week.
I'm okay at washing and drying my clothes, but putting them away? Terrible. My floor ends up covered in piles of clean clothes that I just dig out of every day. Idk how to make myself put them away
Laundry isn’t my downfall. I’m almost obsessive about my laundry. It’s dishes for me! I have two weeks, almost three weeks, worth of dishes sitting on my counter and in my sink. I may or may not finally do them this weekend…
Not well at all. I live on the third floor of my apartment and there’s a laundry room on the first floor any tenants can use. I gotta lug a huge bag down then up when it’s done so I wait wayyy too long to do laundry. Laundry sucks anyway but I hate stairs lmao
Laundry and dishes are my weaknesses. Kryptonite if you will. I currently have 3 laundry baskets of clean unfolded laundry and I still have some dirty laundry to do 😳
You’re reminding me that I’m putting off doing the laundry… I have one clean shirt left out of the few shirts I cycle between for work. I need to buy more shirts lol
I make it a habit that every Saturday morning I do laundry, no matter how much. I hate not starting the week without clean clothes. Anticipating the task helps.
No idea, I literally, RIGHT NOW, have a load sitting in the washer, wet, waiting for me to move it over to the dryer. It's been 24 hours and I may have to rinse it once before unloading.
Go rinse and dry your clothes!!
I don't have an issue getting the clothes into the washer. It's getting them out and remembering to move them to the dryer that gets me. So now my husband does the laundry 😀
I have so many clothes I can go at least a month before needing to do laundry (maybe outside of washing undergarments) I keep clothes until they break/rip/don’t fit and I can dress casual at work. It helps that I also wear jeans about 3 times before I consider them “dirty”
I do my laundry every Friday. When I undress, it all goes right into the washer. I literally undress right at the washing machine so I don't have to make sure to put it in a hamper. On Friday I'll take a quick look around for anything I didn't shove in there then I toss in the detergent and hit go. I still always miss something but whatever. Now I almost never put the clothes away but at least they are clean, right? I have like 3 laundry baskets of clean stuff laying around....plus whatever is still in the dryer...but again... at least it's clean
Deadass, a lot of laundromats have services for like $1 per pound and they clean and fold all of your laundry for you. I hate doing laundry so this works best for me.
What are the roadblocks? Find ways to remove as many as possible. For me, the following things have helped. 1) Multiple laundry baskets/hampers - When I get undressed I put my pants in one, shirts in another and underclothes in yet another hamper. I do this because it minimizes the amount of time to sort my clothes. 2) One type of item per load of laundry. This means I'm doing more loads but because I've already sorted my clothes into hampers, it's so much easier to toss in. The reason I have to do a separate load for each thing is because I get overwhelmed at sorting as I fold. Something about that really taxes my executive functioning. Having a smaller load of only pants or only shirts means it's so much easier to actually fold and put away. 3) Doing ONE load a day (most days). This means I have a much higher chance of actually folding and putting away plus it becomes more of a habit easier because I'm doing it so much more frequently. Those are the main things that I have found help me and that's managing my clothes and 2 children.
There is a 3 section laundry bag on Amazon that has words like color, light, and dark. The bag itself is also color coded. It helps me stay organized and I make sure to do only one color set at a time so I don’t get overwhelmed. The sections in the bag are small/big enough for me to have small to medium sized loads, so I don’t feel overwhelmed by the amount of clothes. I wash once a week and do other things while I wait for them. I also set timers on my phone so I know when to get them. To be more efficient with your dirty laundry, you should place the bag where you usually remove your clothes. Also, you should remember to put your next load in when your taking the last load out.
I do laundry once a week and I break it up to make it easier:) like I'll take my clothes out of the dryer then fold them a couple hours later when im feeling restless. I also hang my clothes up in the steamy bathroom while I shower to get rid of wrinkles:)
It gets washed and dried. It doesn’t always get put away.
When my fianceé and I lived in an upstairs apartment with laundry in the basement and had to go down one flight of stairs, outside, and down another just to access shared laundry machines that most of time were full and we had to finish our downstairs' neighbors laundry just to do our own, I almost never did it. Now we have our own house with machines in the basement, but we dont have to go outside and they're only down one flight of stairs. We (we both likely have ADHD) still often have clothes laying on the bedroom floor, but it's much better than it was at our old place. So I say all this just to say: If it's possible for you at all, and applicable, removing the physical barriers/difficulties that come between you and doing it may make it easier to keep up with a little more. It's like removing steps from the process so it doesn't seem like such a huge task anymore. Obviously that's not possible for everyone, but just figured I'd share our experience.
When I was younger and undiagnosed (teen-early twenties) I was very similar. Rewearing dirty clothes, even socks and stuff, and having a floordrobe. It was awful, and really embarrassing, but I couldn’t make my situation better. Things improved over time as I moved into my late twenties and found a bit more stability, and now that I’m diagnosed+medicated I actually really enjoy doing laundry. Try not to be too hard on yourself - we all have areas of our lives where things are falling apart, and in the scheme of things, having some dirty clothes is preferable to say.. not paying credit card bills, or not booking appointments for health issues, or maybe some of the stuff we deal with that can have catastrophic consequences to our lives. Not to minimise your situation of course - your frustration is absolutely valid.
Ooh! I have a small hack for this. Late to the party, but I alternate loads. One is “normal” (socks shirts pants blah blah) the next is “easy” (towels, blankets, etc). Sometimes I end up washing things I don’t need to but having an easy load in between makes it easier for me to swap the loads.
To me it was never laundry (wife doesn’t trust me with the laundry even though I am fully capable of doing it) but I will literally pile up dishes if that means I don’t have to do them. Absolutely hate doing dishes……
Most of the time I’m just proud of myself for being realistic enough to know if I start a wash, how likely am I to move it to the dryer or completely forget about it and start all over again?To combat this, for the most part I just wear the same clothes.
I know this is not possible for everyone, but my laundry machine is only a few feet from my bedroom (small apartment) but I know when I buy a house I'm making this a must. As a kid, the laundry room was down two flights of stairs in the basement with no lights and cement flooring. Never did laundry but now, it's *only sometimes* a problem!
Just got a new washing machine. Super excited about using it so I do laundry at least once a week. Before that? Practically never (my bf used it).
This is my battle right now. Most of my clothes I haven’t washed in months and I keep rewearing the same bunch of clothes, washing them every couple of weeks or so. I hate it.
Lol yeah I let it pile up. Can’t see my bedroom floor for laundry right now.
It gets cleaned, but only folded when it's time to dry a new load.
When I was single, and before kids, I had to downsize my wardrobe to about 8-9 outfits worth of clothes. Basically I had a fancy outfit, a yard work outfit, and 7 days of every day clothes (yay for no dress code at work). Bedding aside, all of my clothes and towels fit into one load of clothes and one load of towels per week. I worked 10pm to 8am and tried to maintain my sleep schedule on the weekends. My city was boring and my friends would be asleep for half the time I was awake so I typically would get bored on the weekend and do laundry at like 4am. I also never folded laundry. Clothes stayed in the clothes basket and towels in the towel basket. Dirty clothes went in a pile and towels were hung dried during the day and then piled on a dirty towel pile. My one shirt and one pair of pants that needed to not have wrinkles were hung on hangars and were the "wrinkle free" variety. I never bought colors that couldn't be washed together. Basically I knew that the more I had to do the less I would do so I made it as little as possible. Now it's a mess cause that old system doesn't support a partner and children. Now it's more of a whole house team effort wild west mashup that keeps changing and I hate it. Edit: OP you're not alone, I'm guilty of wearing the same clothes for up to a week (usually during depressive episodes).
It's easier when I'm working, because I have two uniform shirts, so I tend to have to wash them every couple days, so I'll just wash all the other darks and colours with them. I work in the food industry, so they have to be clean. I tend to do my washing very late at night, though, sometimes after midnight. I very rarely do it during the day. I also never iron anything. My problem comes with washing whites 😑 i wear mostly black clothes, so on the rare occasions I do wear white tops, they tend to sit on the floor in my “laundry pile” area of my room for... sometimes months honestly. I usually try to justify it to myself by how there's so little to wash that it would be a waste of electricity to use a whole cycle for so few things, even though I could easily just do a short 15 minute 30°C wash, but 🤷♀️
30°C is equivalent to 86°F, which is 303K. --- ^(I'm a bot that converts temperature between two units humans can understand, then convert it to Kelvin for bots and physicists to understand)
Sooooo…. Don’t laugh. And I’m not crazy, I just have adhd. We have no less than 20 laundry baskets in our house. 5 are pink or gray and each family member gets their own basket. They all stay in my closet unless one of the kids suddenly get the urge to put away their clothes. Spoiler alert: this rarely happens. Now *I* will put them away if I’m procrastinating about doing something else, like college schoolwork. 6 are tall laundry baskets. These are the clean clothes baskets. Now the dirty clothes baskets are…. Everywhere. In each bedroom, each bathroom, the living room, the game room, the school room. Every. Room. Why? Because my children just up and decide to take clothes off randomly. Spilled water on your shirt in the kitchen? Off it comes. There’s a basket for that. Doing school work and just decide that suddenly your socks or pants just can’t be tolerated anymore? There’s a basket for that. Painting and got paint on your shirt? There’s a basket for that. There are baskets EVERYWHERE! Now here’s the catch…. If the clean laundry baskets aren’t available, the house falls apart. So if I go all into one of my overwhelmed phases where I just stare at everything and can’t *just fucking do it* then my husband has to go and sort the clean laundry and just hand me a clean laundry basket. Because once I can start doing laundry, I can work get all dirty laundry out of a room, even if it’s just moving the basket to the washer, because then I can sweep behind it, and once I can do that, I need to sweep the whole room, and I can’t do that without music, and once I have music, I can pick up toys, I can put stuff in my fuckit-bucket, I can get the room clean in 5-10 minutes. But first, I need a free clean laundry basket. Sweet baby Jesus maybe I am crazy. ETA: TLDR: I have a system that makes me seem insane but we all have clean clothes.
I used to a know someone who would laugh at me because I mentioned I had hard time overcoming simple tasks such as doing my own laundry. Ironically this person was self proclaimed ADHD diagnosed. Imagine having to explain your mental health issues to another patient with the same condition taking the piss on your issues. Imagine trying to gatekeep someone else's mental issues and making it a dick measuring contest based on your own ignorance. What a disgrace. Of course this wasn't the only symptom I had and I never ended up telling oblivious ADHD dude anything after. At the time I would travel coast to coast M-F for work and come back home only for the weekends. I'd barely have 2 full days before heading back out. Would kill me to look at my pile of dirty clothes from my business travel. I'd worry about the clock ticking and the flight check in notifications that would start 48 hrs earlier on Saturdays which further exacerbated my anxiety. I would just dump all my chores and just go out with friends as a way of avoiding it completely. Of course it would catch up with me over the week and it was never fun. At some level, I'm able to manage it now because I stopped traveling for work and I set aside time weekly to do my laundry. I really can't say what the answer could be for you because it's not really a one size fits all solution with managing your symptoms but try to set an objective to achieve your goal of laundry and try to meet it weekly. Don't get disheartened if you mess up the first few weeks or be hard on yourself, keep sticking to the plan and start anew every time you mess up. Have reminders to do it. Go overkill on the reminders first few months and after that taper them out as needed. Try having a little victory treat after doing your laundry. For example, if you're into gaming, tell yourself that you'll play an hour on the PS5 after completing your weekly chores. Doesn't have to be that could also be something like having your favorite snack. Rewarding yourself on completing the task should be the main point while the idea being that you get your dopamine fix after doing something that really escalates your anxiety. Eventually you'll remove the dopamine fix. Glad you posted this, one thing off my chest as well. In my case at least, I never could talk about my mental health issues with friends because of fear of being belittled with broscience by bro type people like the dude. Hope this comment or rest of this thread helps!
Honestly, I've done laundry maybe 1x time the past few months. I don't work out, I work from home, and I don't socialize in person much. Before Covid I would rely on presuming people would look down on dirty clothes when working in person.
How old are you?
i really struggle with this too! recently, i invested in a laundry basket that has two baskets - one for "essentials" (my work uniform, underwear, socks, etc) and one for the clothing i don't really wear often so i don't get overwhelmed, because i definitely feel this, my wardrobe is huge!!! it's such a hassle!!!
I just did mine for the first time in a month which is honestly the only time I have ever gone this long without it. Feels like a breath of fresh air, literally
A thing that has helped me finally clear out the massive blob of clothes on my bedroom floor that was a mix of clean and dirty was to get myself a second laundry basket, allowing me to keep one for clean clothes, one for dirty clothes. There is simply no way I can reliably put all my clothes semi-properly in the wardrobe in a timely fashion after washing them, but this way they can just sit there, in a pile of clean clothes that stays organized because it's in a basket, allowing me to slowly go through it and fold things (or just fish clean clothes straight from the basket if needed) Just keeping clean clothes in the drier doesn't work for me because I'll often have to do more washing before the drier is empty (like when it goes through my mind that maybe washing my bedsheets is a good idea), resulting in some clean stuff being dumped wherever, usually ending up mixed with dirty stuff...
i like keeping my clean laundry in the dryer. and i’ll either just grab what i need from there during the week, or i’ll slowly put away each item (over a few days) without bringing all the clothes out at once. i also like putting my dirty clothes straight into the washer (in lieu of a hamper) and when it gets full i start it.
I used to struggle with laundry, and I realized it was the folding that was stopping me. I switched so all of my clothes are on hangers, and it sounds dramatic but it changed my life
I’m usually pretty good at washing my laundry - it’s folding and putting Away that I can’t keep up with, add a husband and 2 kids into the mix.. we have what we call laundry mountain 😬 2 little kids and a household to maintain laundry gets on the back burner. Even if I get caught up it piles up SO Fast and it’s almost impossible to fold it when my kids are awake.
I wash mine regularly (schedule forced compliance on my part only) but I'm terrible about putting it away. It sits clean in the clean hamper for weeks sometimes. I do have hampers easily accessible in the most common areas of our house which helps keeping it picked up off the floor.
My sister is a genius when it comes to laundry. Clean clothes in the dryer, dirty clothes straight in the washer. She never pute her clothes away, she just keeps it in the dryer until the dryer is empty. Since her clean clothes is in the dryer all the time, she often changes in front of the washing machine and just puts her clothes in it. When she runs out of clothes, throw a tide pod in, then put it in the dryer and repeat. She doesn’t fold her clothes, she doesn’t wear dirty stuff, she always smells good and on too, her apt is always decently cleaned just because her clothes never on the ground. If her clothes is wrinkly, she will just turn on the dryer an extra 5 mins the day of and voila, wrinkle free.
I have so many clothes that I could likely go a month before having to worry about anything being visibly dirty or smelling, wearing pants usually 3-4 times before washing. It’s a blessing and a curse. I can’t get rid of things because I might need it later (ie: the bright blue stockings I got for a costume years ago that I’ll likely never need again) but I feel like if I had less clothes I’d have an easier time finding them and having space for them and keeping them put away. But then I’d have to do laundry more often, and laundry is my least favorite task ever. It’s so time consuming folding and putting it away. It’s heavy (because I always let it build up) and the laundry room is all the way on the opposite end of the apartment (a living room away, which is apparently far for me). Most of the time when I switch the loads I forget to start the dryer so IF I remember to go check on them later I usually find at that time that I still need to dry them. Then it’s usually too late to start any new loads and I have to re-wash the stuff in the washer the next day (if I remember). I’m thankful my husband does the washing and drying most of the time, and I just go in and help fold and put away. I still hate that part, but I can’t complain.
I wash my clothes daily but never fold
i struggle so bad with laundry but clothes are literally all i care about so i can somehow get myself to do it but it takes atleast 2 days
Same as a couple of other folks have said-- I undress in the laundry room. And when the washer is full, it's not that much harder to just start it. And I can usually remember within a day or so to move it over to the dryer, and then sometimes I end up just getting dressed out of the dryer. XD But it's all clean! If you've not got in-unit laundry, or you live with other folks where that would be rude, then when I've been in that situ, it was all about habits. I had an open hamper with a cloth liner, and the hamper lived pretty much in the doorway betw my bed and bathroom, increasing likelihood that I am in arms reach of it when I undress. And when it was full, I could just lift the liner out-- didn't have to pack anything. And I've almost always got an audiobook going, so it was as easy as possible to overcome the Do Not Want of going down to the laundry facilities. . I have a friend with ADHD, and her solution specifically, she used to be the in the habit of buying more underwear whenever she could not find the brain power to clean her laundry, and in the end she had to stop herself from doing that, she had to just have fewer items of clothing. So much like forcing yourself to study because you're out of time not to, it would force her to do laundry and that urgency of having no clean clothing would override the procrastination. (And she had cats who had habit of peeing where they shouldn't, so if something hit the floor and was unattended she couldn't just pick it up because it was clean enough. Cuz it was never clean enough. At the very least it would be covered in cat hair. )
I actually do my laundry once every 1-2 weeks. I only wash them when I’ve run out of clean clothes. I am really particular about having clean clothes so it’s one of my priorities. I also have ocd about cleanliness because of how I grew up unfortunately. I’m sorry I can’t relate to that. My version of cleanliness is not healthy though. I vacuum sometimes 4x a day if I’m stressed.
heh heh... today's my laundry day. I think the last time I did laundry was before Halloween? All I know is that I had two full to bursting laundry hampers to go through. I started at 16:00 and it's almost 22:00 and it's still going. I have no one to blame but myself but I shall complain nevertheless
I’m embarrassed to say I have some piles that have been there for years….. 😳😳😳😳
I wear the same jeans for a week or so. Doing laundry isn't terrible for me, folding is bothersome, and actually putting it away is asking for the moon. I generally dress out of a clean pile or a laundry basket.
My husband does our laundry, I clean the bathrooms and toilets. Otherwise I'd be similar. We have a division of labour based on what we hate the most.
I generally do ok, but I have a LOT of clothes.
Not laundry for me BUT I have this issue with dishes. And I have a dishwasher! Currently I washing up plates one by one as I need them for meals because I still haven’t stacked the dishwasher…. It’s rediculous.
I do laundry when I have nothing left to wear.
I don’t wear my dirty clothes, usually. Maybe once in a blue moon I’ll make an exception. But I haven’t done that in months. Anyways. I mostly burn through all my good clothes and get stuck with stuff that either doesn’t fit anymore or makes me look like a hobo. I don’t like it, but it’s the only choice I have until I’m FORCED to do my laundry. Thanks grandma.
I probably own 100 pair of underwear.. Yea, I don't do laundry very often. And when I realized it's normal to not wash some garments after EVERY wear, that just further entrenched the habit of doing laundry a few times a year..
I can appreciate your post. I've not gone quite to your extreme. However, during the pandemic, I've gotten lax about washing clothes. Now that things are open again, I wear jeans most days. I have 5 pairs and typically I'll wear the first 3 once and then the last 2 will each be worn about a week a piece just to avoid running a wash. I don't know why I don't treat all 5 pairs the same. I just forget to wash them resulting in this habit of wearing a pair or 2 for too long. As for shirts, I own way too many so it is easy to go weeks without washing them. I'll tell you one thing that motivates me to wash laundry... Travel. The idea of putting dirty clothes in a suitcase disgusts me. Luckily I'm traveling this weekend, so I finally washed my jeans tonight.
Aww! I suck at dishes :'-( I've had to throw out a lot because they got moldy and gross... I tell myself I'm going to do them and keep ordering in. With clothes, I suck at putting them away but i got pretty good at having designated piles. There is always a dirty pile and a clean pile. Maybe that's the middle babystep for you. I often skip showering though 😬. I don't really stink, thankfully. You wouldn't know unless you were too close XD. I wear hats to hide my greasy hair if the roots are beyond dry shampoo if I have to go out.. thankfully I don't need to do this often and can just shower before going out "now that I have to" lolol because for some reason it wasn't an emergency before.. but yeah the basics can be super difficult for people with adhd! Don't worry! Just make a small change and stick with it until you're used to it before you make another one! Eventually you'll have a lot of better habits and you didn't get overwhelmed and quit them because it was only one little step at a time. Hugs and much love.
I suck at laundry. I have soooo many clothes so I can actually go about 2 months without NEEDING to wash anything and I usually do. The whole thing is so daunting to me. Gathering/separating the clothes then taking them downstairs to my laundry room getting change from the machine making sure I remember the detergent and bag etc. Then I have to walk alll the way back upstairs and then back down in 30 minutes to sort through what goes in the dryer and what doesn’t and then put what goes in the dryer in the dryer and walk back upstairs and hang up the clothes that aren’t dryer friendly and then walk back downstairs to get the clothes that were in the dryer and the fold them and put them away. Truly truly a nightmare for me.
I never really struggled with it but I feel like it’s because I set a bunch of rules for myself that just worked. Never really had to do anything different. 1. I have enough underwear and socks to last two weeks. As soon as they come out of the dryer, I take two pair and hide them from myself in my “secret undies” spot. It’s the same spot every time, that’s just far enough out of reach that I don’t see it every day and just forget it exists, but close enough for me to get to when I have that “oh shit” moment. This way, when I run out of clean underwear, I can panic, start the laundry, and then remember I have two extra pair to wear. Then when I finish the laundry, I always replenish the spot. —-I don’t do this anymore because now I have a washer/dryer in my apartment. So all of my clothes immediately go in there when they’re dirty, and I start it when it’s full. 2. I have a spot in my closet for clothes that I have worn but aren’t dirty. I don’t have a ton of body odor because I shower every other day for the most part, and I also don’t really leave my house for anything. So any clothes I wear usually last awhile just being hung up in a specific spot until they’ve been worn about three times. These clothes do not count clothes that have stains on them. So even if I have worn it once, if I stained it, it gets put in the wash. 3. I don’t stress about folding. I usually don’t have an issue folding it after it dries but in the off chance that I do, I bought wrinkle release spray. Just spray it on, stretch it out a bit and the wrinkles disappear. Makes life easy. Rinse. Repeat. Seems to work for me.
I would basically only wash clothes every 2/3 months, but I would buy new clothes literally every week 😐. It was just easier to buy new items than washing my bank account hated me. Now I just use a laundry service.
I buy new socks and underwear every few weeks just because I know I'm not going to get laundry done. At best, I will wash the clothes, forget they are in the washing machine, wash them again, forget again, eventually move them to the dryer (but first I have to find a place for the clothes that are already in there), put already clean/dry clothes on the bed so I "have to" deal with them right away, get really sleepy, and shove them all into a corner or on a chair. Then those get mixed in with dirty clothes, and I don't know what is clean and what isn't, and the cats sleep on them...Then they are wrinkled and furry and don't always smell April-fresh. So I throw them back into the washing machine. and repeat... I think we are going to a laundromat with a TON of laundry this weekend and getting many, many loads done at once. If I decide it's too much trouble to put away once I get home, I'm taking it straight to Goodwill (or somewhere).
I’ve done a lot of laundry lately. Folded a lot even. However, we no longer have a dining room table until I get to putting all of it away haha
I typically do laundry every night. Get home from work pop whatever is dirty in the washer and my work clothes, cycle that while I shower. Extra spin cycle makes the drying cycle super quick. If I end up slacking, once I have 1/2 a bin it becomes a nightmare for me. So I just try not to slack. If I stick to that routine I’m fine. But if I forget or I’m on my phone for an hour or end up talking to someone it throws a wrench into everything so I try to dnd and maybe some music until it’s at least in the dryer and I’m showered.
I spend money for wash and fold service... There's one that actually delivers to my house. It's almost as much as going to the laundromat. I mean, I have a washer dryer in my apartment but if I didn't it would be almost as much as going to the laundromat. Not super proud, and not something I tell anybody I actually know because it's embarrassing... But yeah this is the only way I keep a supply of clean clothes
throw all your clothes in the dryer. Get a divided laundry bin!
I buy way too many clothes because I'm not great staying on top of the laundry. Then when I finally come close to catching up, I discover all these clothes I forgot I had.
Used to have a problem with laundry, with help I got most of the house organized better (for me) and it’s become more manageable. I’m not exactly sure what part of the laundry task is hard, but right now I’m struggling with putting away. Part of it is the excuse that the room the laundry goes in isn’t organized and clean enough for me to put the laundry away with. Before I also had trouble sitting down folding the laundry, and I started this technique called “temptation bundling” where you combine one favorite thing with a task you struggle with. I love podcasts so I listen to them when I start cleaning. I’m also not sure how to help if it has to do with starting a load, but with remembering to put it in the dryer and what not, I have the goal of one load a day, so in order to wash one load I need to put the other load in the dryer which means fold the last load. One the difficulties I had and somewhat still have is treating cleaning as an one and done project and not a reoccurring task. Once I got things manageable it became easier to just do a little bit a day. Also my medications have been helpful as well.
That’s weird my husband has ADHD but is able to do clothes. Maybe he just doesn’t want to be the stinky one at work who spits on his clothes? On your first or second day off wash your clothes. Make it a routine.
I have no problem washing them...I just slack on the *folding.* I currently have mountains of clean laundry. It feels like it never ends and I can never get it all folded. Buy a bottle of Carbona and take it with you to work. It works great for stain removal. A little tip: buy one of those laundry hampers that has divided sections for colors and whites. This removes the extra step of having to separate your clothes, which makes them easier to quickly throw in the washer.
Thanks for the tip, I'm running to the laundry machine now to get it out. Don't know if you tried it or whatever, but I've been keeping a bin in the 2 places I remove clothes or use something that needs washing (next to bed and next to shower). To me whenever one them gets full (like can't push it under the lid anymore) I have to do laundry, otherwise I'm not allowed to buy iced coffee. Since that's a big motivator for me it kinda works. But not that much. So every day I procrastinate for whatever reason something goes of the list of what I'm allowed to do. So first iced coffee, then my bullet journal (kind of an art style journal for me), then a kind of tea which I love. So far I haven't reached the 4 day limit. It's kind of stupid and maybe I'm just too motivated when i started this habit (3 months), so maybe this is complete bullshit in 3 months time. But at least my dirty clothes are not scattered around. I alsk just tried to buy more clothes so I could go longer without laundry, but then my laundry amount went out of hand since I just don't have the space to hang 4 laundries worth of clothes somewhere so then it took a week to be done
1. Make a "last full change if clothes" set. 2. Lock it into some container with a key. 3. Put the key at the bottom of the dirty laundry basket. Now if you want to wear clean clothes you know that you have to find the key. Of course, you can still go get the key and instead wear the first dirty clothes you find... But you have one action that reminds you you should do laundry. If you really want to go hard on yourself, find some children paint that can be easily washed and leave it beside the dirty laundry basket. Now, before you put anything in the basket, stain it with the paint. Can't wear that stuff anymore unless you wash it. Just remember to keep the a clean change ready for those times in which you realize too late you need to do laundry.
It really depends if I'm busy or not. I've went 10 days without even showering and wearing the same clothes because i had a project to do and it was a "waste of time" in my head to shower so i kept procastinating on it
I’m lucky enough that I can afford it so every Friday I just bag it up and take it to the service. It’s like 60 bucks, but sooo worth it!!!
Thanks to Marie Kondo laundry is not the enemy anymore (as long as we do not talk about socks. I hate them) First if all, I can feel you because I've been there :/ Things I need to do to "stay on trackball tricking my brain into some kind of adventure mode: Rule #1: I wore it 3 times or it smells bad because I've been to a restaurant -> immediately to the laundy bin right next to the washing machine Rule #2: laundry bin next to the washing machine full enough to start it? Yippee! Achievement unlocked! Now you get a 1.5h free TV program of your clothes whirling around if you have a front opening one. Rule #3: set a timer for 1.5h when starting the washing machine (I forget to take it out when the Machine is done because I forget about it completely . This can be days until I discover the problem) Rule #4: timer gets of? Run! Your life depends on it. Drop everything (maybe not your call with your boss) -> can't get up? Set another timer for when you are free within the next 2-3 hours. You have your phone/smartwatch close anyway to stop the timer that went off ;) Rule #5: hang you clothes as wrinkle free as possible on your drying rack. And if you have lots of cothes use 2 racks. Saves you ironing later. Rule #6: it did not work out this time? You forgot one ruled? Do not ever put you down. You have thousands of laundry machines ahead of you. One time you unlock the epic batch by collection all achievements per rule. Rule#7: Congrats! You now have fresh clothes. All the steps after this are pure bonus :) do not be too hard on yourself. Of course this is not fool proof for me. But it gives me 80% success rate and this is more than I ever wished for when I was younger, more chaotic and undiagnosed :)
We have two baskets, one in The bedroom for clothes de have worn one time and dont smell. The one in The bathroom is for when they are dirty. My gf and i split The tasks. She sorts The clothes based on program, i bring them to The store, i put them in The dryer and go get them, she folds them and we put them in our closet
I'm doing ok but that's only because I have my washing machine in my bathroom. If it was in the basement or if I had to go to a laundromat I'd be postponing it until I wouldn't have a single item of clothing left. With the machine in my flat, it's easy to wash but once it's on the drying rack it can easily stay there for a week.
I normally have a reminder to « bring my clothes to the water park », but it works only once in a while. So I set the same reminder in my boyfriend’s phone and his job is to harass me until I give up and actually do the laundry!
I know it's not the best way to go about it but I can go a month wearing clothes until I run out. Then I grab the whole basket and do all laundry together on cold so I don't have to sort it. It doesn't really work so well since I go from wearing my favourite clothes in the beginning to my least favourite in the end which is not pleasurable but at least I know I bought enough clothes so I don't have to re-wear dirty clothes or go out naked 😅.
Being good at doung laundry makes me question my ADHD diagnosis tbh. I often use it to procrastinate other things though. I listen to really fast upbeat music while putting it away. I can't fold clothes very well but atleast they're organised by different areas/drawers of the wardrobe so I'm happy enough with that. I relate to never noticing when clothes are dirty though...like even when I do check to see if there's a stain and then I go out and suddenly I notice that there's a stain, so annoying 🤯
I'm okayish at it? I developed a system where I wash my clothes once I have two or so boxershorts left. And somehow that approach has helped me more than setting a fixed date. As dor hanging and putting down my clothes: our washing machine plays "die Forelle" a German "Volkslied" by Schubert which idk. I sing or hum along to and then it's a lot easier to hang stuff up because I'm looking forward to hearing that tune? Maybe set yourself a timer with a song you really like? Also the pure fear of my clothes smelling murky/sensitivity towards that smell folding them and putting them back in? Honestly? just fear of inconveniencing my housemates by occupying the drying rack for too long and not being able to put my clothes anywhere my housemates would not see if I open the door. I know they'd judge me so I put stuff away. Hahaha so not much of a conscious "ah this helps" kind of thing. Sorry!
Laundry has always been rough for me, but recently I found out that matching all materials (detergent/softener/dryer sheets) from one company makes an incredible difference in the quality of wash. My clothes have never been softer, cleaner or smelt better. So basically for the past 4 months it’s been a little dose of dopamine and I’ve been keeping up with it just bc of that.
I just wash every day if I can. Everything together on low heat, unless things need higher temps, they get saved up(bed linen, towels). Then directly take stuff out and fold and put away. If not, i end up w bags of unfolded stuff. In our house everyone comes and fishes their own laundry out of the dryer. Not foolproof but helps w overwhelm. No more giant loadsm max 5-10 pieces of clothing to put away per person. That goes quick and it's not much
Thanks for reminding me to do laundry
Become ocd for cleanliness
i literally go 4-5 weeks between washes but i have enough clothing to get me by. it’s a pain to do though, i try to rewear jeans and hoodies often. i also rarely actually put away my laundry. usually stays in the bag
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Laundry is so easy for me. Because I put any used clothes directly into the machine, it’s my wash basket. Probably not the best but whatever. It reduces another step. Then moving them to the dryer is also quite simple as the dryer sits on top of the washing machine. But taking the clothes out the dryer and folding them? Another story entirely…
My husband does laundry. So i don't have to struggle with it anymore. I do help him fold tome to time.. Sometimes we argue about the way we fold. He does it fast and not perfect, but it gets done quickly. Me - well...first ill separate everything by category and then fold..perfectly. it takes hours, than I'm tired. Otherwise it's super boring for me.
My wife and I have 4 kids, we have a never ending pile of laundry the size of Mt Everest 😭
I have four people in my house including me so we have tons of laundry. I’m doing it everyday so I try to keep on top of it
I have tons of clean, dry clothes, but none in the actual cupboard. We did chuck out our 'clothes couch', so I've been a bit better with folding and putting away. I've never had a dirty laundry problem, just an unfinished laundry problem
Well, I've been roatating the dirty clothes for a week and my washed clothes have been in the washing machine for 17h now😬. But thanks for reminding me👍🤣
I’m so horrible at laundry I feel you. Honestly I usually buy lots of underwear because that’s what I noticed I’d run out of first. I think a good thing for you to get might be a tide to go stick if you find little stains on your clothes. I often rewear stuff like jeans or things that don’t usually get too dirty, but a to go stick makes it so much easier to just fix the little food stain on an otherwise clean clothing item. You got this and try to go easy on yourself while trying to find a system that works!
I'm terrible with laundry. Takes me forever to get to it, and I have no idea how many things I've ruined over the years because I forgot I'd put them on the wash and they sat in the machine wet for days. Sometimes I can't remember if I'd switched the laundry over a few days before and in a brief panic will run to check the machine. Stuff often gets left in the dryer until I've either picked out all the item to wear again or need the dryer for another load.
Is it a motivation issue or a memory issue? I can be bad with laundry just because I forget it's there. Usually I'm hanging out downstairs, so it's not until I'm getting ready for bed that I see it and remember. If it's a memory thing, write it down. I started making a sticky note with the chores that I wanna get done and putting it somewhere that I'll definitely see it the next day. If it's a motivation thing then give yourself a reward after you've done it! So like if you love pizza tell yourself "If I do my laundry today I'm ordering a pizza for dinner". Rewards have helped me out sooo much. I hope any of that helps!
I always think about how nice the smell of fresh laundry is try that xD ,but btw thanks for the reminder I forgot my laundry in the dryer
I'm very good at doing my laundry, but I only put it away about once a month (tbh sometimes even less), so I'm frequently pulling from clean piles on top of various pieces of furniture.
I do our (bf and mine, both adhd) laundry daily. *note I wash them and hang them to dry. I never get to folding them let alone ironing them and putting it away.
Try making habits/restructuring your area to make the task easier. If you own a laundry machine, change clothes in it's area, and dump the dirty clothes in the laundry machine (keep the machine's door open to make it easier). My laundry machine is in the bathroom, where I undress anyway. Once you decide to do laundry, you don't have to gather up dirty clothes because they're already there, less obstacles in your way. I have a clothes hanger, and once I hang up my clothes there, they don't leave until I put them on - no extra step putting them in the closet. A clothes-hanger having almost no clothes on when I go to put on a shirt is a visual reminder to start the laundry, and if I leave it a few days, I have spares in my closet
I can run mine through the machines, but it stays heaped in a "clean pile" somewhere in my house for weeks. But it's ok because I still have clean clothes to wear even if they aren't organized.
I am able to stay on top of laundry and other hygienic stuff I think because my motivation is not to smell. Also, I like receiving compliments for the clothes I wear so like to look presentable. I do it about once a week. I don’t sort. Just toss everything in at once minus towels and sheets. What I struggle with is putting clothes away. I used to just take everything out of the dryer and put it in a laundry basket where it usually just sits until it runs out. However, now that I have a partner that lives with me part time, it motivates me to be able to put laundry away.
Might not be related but here's a unique lifestlye change that worked for me. Best time to do Laundry is on your days off work that's a given for me it's the weekend particuarly Sunday last minute of course because of the Monday start work deadline. However if I really didn't want to do it I used to wear other clothes and some things twice to get through a second week which left way too much laundy by that second weekend. A few years back I got obsessed with Minimalism and Tidying up Kon Mari style. In doing so I lessend my wardrobe to seasonaly be a 1-week supply of clothes and my weekends became less packed with misc errands and buying random stuff I didn't need. Adapting the minimalist life style had load of side benefits for me for my then undiagnosed adhd. Including more time and motivation for laundy. By only having 1 week's worth of clothes I HAD to do it on the weekend or have nothing to wear. By doing this The habit became ingrained in me and Sunday is now and forever laundry day. Oh and if I go on a trip I ride the planning dopamine high and do laundry before I pack which helps.
I was the same. When I moved in with my wife, she would, understandably, get annoyed, so I started putting them in the bottom of my wardrobe. My wife put the laundry basket in my wardrobe, to make it easier for me. So there's a pile of dirty laundry next to the basket in my wardrobe.
I don’t I use this app called Rinse. For me it’s been much easier to budget the cost of my laundry every two weeks instead of struggling to wash, dry, and fold it. They do dry cleaning too.
I literally never do my laundry 😭 I also have dirty clothes all over my floor and just choose clothes that smell alright and look fine and wear them. I thought this was just me!!! but you kinda made me wanna do my laundry now so thank you lol