My housekeeping habits have changed dramatically since college, including the way I wash and manage laundry. In college I would do a load and more than half the time I would leave the clothes in the basket for days getting wrinkled and stale. I quickly realized I couldn't managed a home's laundry with this sloppy method!
Now I have a basket for each person, and one for white rags and dish towels and am committed to always doing a load from start to finish. Whenever my or David's basket is nearly full I run a load of clothes, dry and fold/hang them up in the same day. Otherwise I end up needing to iron and I hate ironing. Laundry isn't as an arduous task now for several reasons.
Number one, I keep each person's laundry separate. This prevents me from going back and forth hanging up and putting away clothes in different dressers once the laundry is done.
Two, I only use cold water to wash our clothes thus eliminating the need to sort darks and whites. This is also better for your clothes, and helps slow color fading. I do wash rags and dish towels with bleach and warm water.
Thirdly, I don't sit down and fold a basket of laundry. Once I pull the laundry out of the dryer, I simply take it to whichever closet it belongs in. Since our house is 80 years old, we only have two rather small closets in the entire house. I have a closet and dresser in our room and David has an armoire in our room and a small closet in the study. I stand there and hang up clothes and quickly fold t-shirts and socks. I grab some extra hangers for any clothes that need to go in the study closet and hang then up when I'm done in our room. Life's too short to fold underwear and so it goes in a bin in the dresser. I can hang, fold and be done with a whole basket in 5 minutes if I move quickly.
A few more laundry tips. While I can usually get a bottle of All detergent for about $1 with sale and coupons, I still like to stretch my detergent. I use about 2/3 to 1/2 the recommend amount and my clothes smell just fine. You can also cut dryer sheets in half to make the box last longer. I have not tried line drying yet, partially because it seems very time consuming and I'm not convinced it saves very much money with as few loads I do a week.
I have noticed our dryer is rather slow and read that dryer sheets can leave an invisible film on the lint trap, causing it to not catch lint as efficiently. Supposedly you can wash the lint trap with soap and water to remove the film. I'll have to try this out later tonight and see if it makes a difference.
Laundry is the bane of my existence! But you are right about doing a load from start to finish. I used to let all the clean stuff pile up and fold it/put it away all at the same time. Wrinkles everywhere! I set up an area near my washer and dryer (in the basement) and can hang up/fold stuff as it comes out of the dryer. Much easier!
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