While we discuss the issue of laundry, I thought you also might want to see some adorable pictures of my oldest, modeling my handmade newspaper backdrop that I used for some Valentine’s Day pictures.

About a week ago, I mentioned a game changer in my daily routine. As the saying goes, it takes twenty-one days to make a habit (and only three to break it, so fingers crossed I don’t forget for three days in a row).  It’s been a little over 21 days, and I’m happy to say that my life has been made less stressful, even if it’s just a small amount of stress.  I have been doing at least one load of laundry EVERY SINGLE day for 3.5 weeks.  (I say at least one load, because sometimes I do two smaller loads).  Hampers have remained manageable, and we don’t have baskets of unfolded clothes laying around for days.

I’m almost embarrassed to admit it, but it was so overwhelming to me before to do laundry that I rarely washed anything other than clothes and towels.  In the past three weeks, I’ve washed the bathroom floor mats in both upstairs bathrooms, I’ve washed shower towels more frequently than just once a week (ewww, I know), I’ve washed mattress pads and winter coats.  It’s amazing!

Before, when we used to do 10-12 loads all at once, the biggest nightmare was the SOCKS!  There would be a gigantic pile of socks we would save till the end.  Half of them didn’t have a match anywhere in sight, and it took forever to do the sock part of the laundry. Doing a small load every day seriously makes that one part of the laundry awesome.  There are usually only 3-4 pairs of socks in the load–they ALWAYS have their match with them since they were in the load together, and it’s a breeze.  I no longer hate socks.  A miracle!

SO . . . if you haven’t already tried it, there’s still hope.  If you work all day, it can still work for you.  Every night before you go to bed, take our your ONE basket–because that’s all you’ll ever need.  Put a load in the basket and leave it in the hallway so that you remember when you wake up to put it in right away before you head to work.  If you put it in before you do anything else, you may even have time to put it in the dryer before you head out for the day.  If not, set a reminder on your phone to do it when you get home.  And then after dinner, it will literally take you five minutes to fold and put away. Five minutes.  Much happier than the 1-2 hours it took me on the weekend!!