5 Reasons Why I Only Do Laundry Once a Week
People often look surprised when I mention I only do laundry once a week. I do have to clarify that I only refer to clothing laundry. I usually throw a load or two of towels, tea towels, tablecloths, and linens in between, but that only takes an hour of my day.
Granted, we are a small family of 3, so we have fewer loads than bigger families. However, if you plan according to your family size, you can do laundry once a week (maybe twice or three times a week, maximum) and not every day! I don’t know about you, but I prefer to do laundry three times a week than every day!
Regardless of the number of family members, we all need a boost to make laundry day more manageable. I recently learned that hard water (water with a high pH) could deteriorate your clothes faster because of several minerals. You can add 20 Mule Team® Borax, an all-natural multi-purpose household cleaner, to your laundry load, to fix that.
What Borax does is that it brings the water’s pH balance to a neutral solution, turning it into ‘soft water,’ helping reduce damage to fabrics and clothing. Better yet, you can pre-soak fabrics stained with oil, fatty, or protein stains in a mixture of 1/2 cup of Borax per gallon of warm water before starting the laundry load, and the mixture will help dissolve the stain.
While busy experimenting with Borax in the laundry room, I was thinking about how can I convince others to reduce the number of loads and try switching to only doing their clothing laundry once a week.
Do you think I can convince you to have a ‘laundry day’ instead of having to do ‘laundry every day? Below are my five reasons to only do laundry once a week.
1. Done and Forgotten for a Whole Week!
There isn’t a better feeling than accomplishing something from start to finish in one shot. And the truth is, I have very few of those moments.
My mind is a multitasker (although I’m not too fond of multitasking), and there are always unfinished projects around my office, studio, and home in general. So to me, doing laundry all in a day means I don’t have to think about it for the next six days, and I can focus my attention on other things around the house. Everything is put away at once, saving me lots of time and effort.
When you commit to doing only one primary task a day, it will have your full attention. You can focus on it and dedicate more time which means you can do things faster.
2. Save Water, Energy, and Extend Fabrics’ Life
I often wonder how does one load of laundry look for people who say they do laundry every single day. My family could not possibly accumulate enough soiled clothing for me to put together a whole load of laundry every day.
You have a win-win situation if you can delay doing laundry until you have a full load. You save water and energy, especially if you have top loader machines. Let’s say, instead of doing two small loads, you are doing one big load of laundry using probably the same amount of water.
Also, if you want to take care of your clothing, consider skipping washes. You don’t need to throw in the hamper clothes after only one use. For example, you can wear jeans up to 4 times between washes (if they’re not smelly or stained), bath towels once a week, and sheets and bedding once every two weeks. However, if someone in your family is ill, you should wash bed linens at least every other day.
Waiting a whole week to do laundry helps you also accumulate enough clothing to sort them into the three main groups: darks, lights/whites, and color.
3. Find What You Need, When You Need It
By doing laundry once a week, I program my brain to know almost exactly what’s clean and folded and what’s in the hamper.
Doing laundry once a week helps you keep track of things like school uniforms, soccer gear, or ballet leotards. For example, I know that my son has clean socks, underwear, and school uniforms on Monday mornings, enough to last him the entire week. Along the same lines, we know that his Karate uniform is clean and hung for Tuesdays afternoon, ready for action.
Think about it. How can you possibly keep track of your favorite jeans or yoga pants if you’re not sure if you washed them yesterday, the day before, or if you even washed them at all?
4. Raise Laundry Day Awareness
When you do laundry once a week, you raise awareness in your household by letting the entire family know that it’s time to lend a hand, especially your kids. After all, isn’t it easier to ask them for help once a week rather than every single day?
If you have school-aged children, they can help with laundry work. Now that our son is older, I can ask him to lend me a hand. He helps by hauling his own laundry hamper to the laundry room and sorting clothing into groups.
At the end of the day, we bring upstairs all the clean and folded laundry (stacked in a basket) and put everything away in one swoop. You can hand each of your children a small basket containing their clothing and ask them to put it away if they are old enough to do so.
5. More Dedication, Less Rush, Fewer Wrinkles.
When you designate a day for laundry, you create a mindset. Your habits change as you introduce the new routine, and slowly but surely, it becomes an automatic thing to do. I like to say that I have my laundry day set on autopilot. I do an average of 6 to 8 loads of laundry every Saturday. Laundry starts early in the morning, and I am usually done by 5 or 6 p.m.
There are a couple of reasons why I chose Saturday as my laundry day.
- I usually don’t leave home on Saturdays, at all during the day. My time, focus, and efforts are all dedicated in one and only one thing: laundry. I do other things, I don’t sit and watch the loads go round. However, I am not going grocery shopping, or chauffeuring my son from and to school, Karate lessons, Religion, etc.
- I can fold clothes immediately after the dryer’s cycle is done. You can avoid wrinkles by fluffing and folding clothes while they’re still warm. This is one of the biggest advantages of doing laundry once a week. By staying focused, you act quickly and you can get the clothes out of the dryer while they’re still warm. No need to re-run the dryer and air fluff again -saving you energy-. If you leave a pile of clothes on a bed, basket or couch to fold later, you will find lots of wrinkles.
- Saturdays have a much slower pace. The phone doesn’t ring as much, and we usually take out or go out to dinner. So I am not juggling food prep with laundry.
Last but not least, laundry day brings renewal to my mind and my home. Without the rush -no other million things to do on the same day- I feel comfortable doing laundry. I can actually stop and smell the roses (or fabric softener!). On Saturdays, I also like to vacuum all rugs and do a quick spot cleaning to my floors. It feels good to have the entire home smelling clean and fresh!
Here’s an interesting post on how to avoid common laundry mistakes.
Using Borax Beyond the Laundry Room
Borax is known for its many uses in the laundry room, but many other benefits are available. In fact, you can find them written on the back of the box! Borax helps clean -naturally- pots and pans, tile, fine china, sinks, ovens, microwaves, even mattresses, and pillows.
One of the many uses I am looking forward to trying is cleaning the sink’s garbage disposal. I also would like to try making my own multi-purpose cleaner with Borax, water, and essential oils. Sounds easy, right?
So, what do you say? Are you team Laundry Day or team Laundry Every Day, and why? Leave a comment below; I would love to hear your opinion!
I wash towels often during the week but I only wash my clothes on saturday. I get kids clothes up for the week and just grab them instead of having to do it every night. Keeps me from having to do so much when I get off work and have to cook and clean kitchen up.
I advocate once a week washing. It gets the kids to wear different things instead of the same items over and over. Will definitely try then Borax. For some reason I thought it was to be avoided but can’t recall why.
Wonderful article, but if you decide or get the chance to do one with tips for doing laundry at the laundry mat THAT would be just AMAZING!!!
I’m a new/first time mom at age 30 with a 2 and 4year old (adoption have them less than a year so I’m still learning a lot lol)
Anyway I do laundry about. Every 2week (10-14 days) And I have quickly learned I have no idea how to get kids stains out or where most of them even come from!
I’ll definitely be running to Walmart to find borax when I’m done here (at the laundry mat 😅) thanks! Have a great week and god bless!
Mrs. Staggs, thanks for your reading! Best of luck raising your babies 🙂 Enjoy!
Fels Naptha soap. It’s a bar soap found in most laundry aisles. Wet the clothes, rub on & scrub with a little brush if needed. Had 2 young ones & like you said – didn’t know where half the stains came from.
I do this, already!! Saturday is my laundry day, as well!! I will give the Borax a try. Great tips!!
Wonderful, Terrelle! Happy to have like-minded readers! 🙂 –
I am definitely an “every other day” laundry doer… and when I wash them, I usually take a while to fold/hang everything, so they generally sit in a pile somewhere in my bedroom. Thanks for these tips!
Oh, no Carrie, you need to get on my team. Folding same day makes life so much easier. Fewer wrinkles!!! Thanks for reading 🙂
Great tips!!
Thank you!