Laundry is currently the bane of my
Existence
It wasn’t always this way. My partner did laundry for a long time. It became his chore because he didn’t like how I did laundry. I folded, and he washed. It worked. Unfortunately, life is full of surprises, and for health reasons, he can’t do laundry in our house, so it has fallen on me.
On the upside, he has given me a document on how he does various types of laundry, which is useful when actually doing laundry. The downside is that his physical processes are optimized for a neurotypical person, and I am Neurospicy (spicy subtype ADHD).
Rich Pink wasn’t joking when he mentioned in this Instagram that if you are ADHD, you probably have laundry in the washer or dryer that needs attention. I feel seen. I have forgotten laundry in both the washer and dryer. I’ve forgotten to go downstairs and reset an unbalanced washing machine. I’ve forgotten the second rinse cycle necessary with our hard water. There are so many things, and it’s only been my purview for a few months.
I’m slowly finding ways to optimize the process that feels right for me. And I’m lucky my partner has been understanding.
ADHD HACK Below
The first significant change I’ve instituted is how I bring the laundry upstairs from the basement. The old way is in laundry baskets. Unfortunately, laundry baskets tend to become doom pile receptacles and aren’t always available. Additionally, they are awkward to carry down steep steps. Eventually, I realized we used laundry baskets out of habit, not because of any real need.
I’m fond of re-examining processes to right-stream them. Here, I realized that we would never be folding clothes downstairs because it was my partner’s job, and I could use reusable shopping bags to carry the laundry upstairs to my partner.
This was useful for 3 reasons:
1) We have several reusable shopping bags to use already, and they are easy to acquire
2) They are easy to store, so having some upstairs and downstairs is simple
3) They have handles, making them easier to transport
So far, this is working well for us. Next up is implementing the Laundry Sorting Protocol, which unfortunately requires more steps than this.