Home Management: Laundry

In all honesty, I'm tired. I'm always tired. We've been living in a stressful situation for ages, and I have some underlying issues that mean I'm exhausted all the time, regardless of how much sleep I am, or am not, getting. What this means is that, in essence, our housekeeping is mediocre at best. Skeeve has the same problem, though instead of having the underlying issues, he has a full-time job outside the house. And so, a lot of the things that are routine for others, tend to fall by the wayside for us. And since I seem to have found a way to keep up with laundry, I figured I'd share.

We're managing laundry for three. Skeeve, who at six and a half feet has clothes that I could swim in, me, obviously, and Mad Natter, who could go swimming in my clothes. So there's a lot of sizes in there. None of us are particularly good with hampers and baskets either, which makes for extra challenge. This winter, I went out and got three brand new laundry baskets. They hold almost precisely one load worth of wash each.

One of them lives in the hallway outside the bathroom. This makes it much easier for Mad Natter to use the basket - he often changes his clothes in the bathroom. Skeeve and I vacillate between using the hall basket (it's right outside our door), and the second basket - which is kept in our room.  The third basket is kept empty - on purpose. Once a week, we combine the two baskets into one to go down to the wash. We leave one empty basket in the bedroom, put the deliberately-empty basket in the hall, and take the third down to the wash.

The reason this works? There are always laundry baskets where we need them and when we need them. The third basket moves around, and I can fold the laundry whenever I have the time - and not have to worry about the laundry piling up on the floor while I do it.

Do you have any tips and/or tricks for household maintenance? How to keep up with the vacuuming, or the dishes, or washing floors?  Please share them!