The part I despise the most is putting them in the closet. I’ve tried many solutions, but I’ve not found any that made the job less tedious.
When I was a student, I just threw my clothes into various shelves based on the type and considered that good enough. I did not fold clothes ever. I just threw the boxers in one shelf, the socks in another, T-shirts in another, pants in another.
As an adult with a family, this won’t be accepted anymore.
I had a period in which I had a dryer, but I did not find that it saved me a lot of time because the fastest way to get the laundry into the shelves and the hangers is by sorting it first. And if I had to sort it anyways, I could just sort it on the drying rack and put it on the hangers on the drying rack.
I think it’s fairly hard to find solutions to fix this.
I have considered mapping out each step, and then try to identify the pain points. Then find ways to remove as much friction as possible. Kind of like how an UX designer would handle this.
As an adult with a family, this won’t be accepted anymore.
This right here is the real problem. Can you explain what’'s unacceptable about it and why you’re not asking, “How do I convince my spouse to accept this?”
That probably isn’t even necessary. If OP doesn’t mind doing dishes, they can share responsibilities. OP does dishes and puts them away, spouse does laundry and puts clothes away. Everything is now clean and tidy and nobody HAS to do the thing they hate.
Nakedness. Ideally find a work from home situation. Careful answering the door.
Converting my family into nudists does not seem to be the right solution here.
However, the idea of trying to reduce the amount of clothes that are worn daily might be on the right track.
If you gotta do it, you could consider matching socks / underwear / undershirts. Then pants and shirts can be worn multiple times to cut back?
I advocate getting your family to do the laundry and put it away instead and you can do something someone else doesn’t like: cooking, or dishes, or lawn and garden care or something.
My parents were always naked at home. Like, always. And it was that way pretty much until I grew up.
My grandpa wore coveralls, he had a rack of identical coveralls and I can’t remember him ever wearing anything else.
Become a nudist.
I’m a nudist and this is actually legit. I only wear clothes to go outside sometimes and often only briefly so I’ll usually just hang them back up when I’m done. I only do a single small load of laundry once a month or so. My wife isn’t so she has to do like 4 loads a month of her clothes.
How do you deal with body soil on furniture?
Sheets on the couch, covers on chairs.
Soooo how often do you wash those sheets that are the equivalent of your underwear?
Once a month or so. But I’m the only person that sits in that spot naked so take that how you will. You’re gonna gross yourself out from your own worldview no matter what I say.
Edit: Didn’t your momma tell you that nekiid bodies are disgusting?
This is maybe tmi, but female bodies produce secretions down there even while not on their period. It’s called cervical mucous and is most notable once a month (a week or two after your period ends), but can sometimes occur at other times. I understand that you are male. But as someone with female parts, I just wonder if it would be embarrassing standing up and there is a stain on the sheets on the couch.
That’s a very good point!
This is actually so interesting lol. It raises so many questions for me. Like, did your current wife know you were a nudist before marrying you? How did she take it when she found out? Something you had to break to her or did you know she’d be fine with it? She doesn’t think it’s annoying to accommodate you nudism in her home? Like, people coming over unannounced is harder etc? Stuff on the furniture and so on?
Please answer any, all, or none, however you see fit. 😁
Yeah she knew the whole time. It’s never a problem at all. We have separate rooms and I can always just throw a sarong on it need be. I’m not sure why you would assume there would be problems. There aren’t any.
Well, I’m not assuming there are, just wondering if there are. 🙂 Anyway, that’s great for you.
The separate rooms thing, is that something you both want because of the nudism?
No, it has nothing to do with it. We just both prefer having our own bedrooms. Nudism is completely not an issue for me.
Interesting. I could never imagine wanting a separate room to my wife. To each their own. 😊
Yep, that’s totally valid. We are both people who don’t like physical contact all the time so sharing a bed is not great for us. We do enjoy it from time to time and sleep together (especially while camping).
become a nudist
Live out of a laundry basket. If anyone questions it just curl yourself around the laundry basic and scream like a possum protecting its nest of young. Maintain solid eye contact throughout. Defecate if necessary.
They’ll never mention it again and probably warn others. you can then live out of that laundry basket free of judgement.
Follow me for more info about living life with the freedom of a possum .
Lower your standards. Half-ass fold things. Don’t use hangers. I drape over the drying rack and have gotten pretty adept at a quick lift and couple of shitty folds into a stack. Another tip is to have clothing that don’t care about wrinkles (synthetics, sports clothing). Then you can just throw them into a drawer. I have pretty homogeneous clothing (all the same featureless t-shirt in black, white, grey, same underwear, etc). This helps with the organizing on to the drying rack. I know exactly how many of each goes where and it is trivial to color coordinate so the half ass folding naturally collates the stacks.
I wait to do laundry every couple of weeks. It all fits in one load most of the time (bought largest high efficiency machine, 12kg capacity). Some clothing gets more than one use before washing, and it entirely depends on how active I am in that clothing.
All of this helps me personally mitigate my extreme disdain at the task. Oh, and getting absolutely stoned out of my mind. Put on some tunes, it ain’t so bad either the draping (largest things first), or the shitty folding.
This is the total opposite of what you should do. Letting it pile up and doing it sloppily is like pulling off the bandaid as slowly and painfully as possible.
Produce less dirty laundry. Depending on what you do for a living, and the climate, some clothes can be worn more than once. The main ones that come to mind are pants, but your discretion on other items. Just don’t be gross and stinky
I have a dryer. All clothes go in the dryer because outside is wet and inside is tiny. If clothes don’t like the dryer, they shrink and we can’t wear them, therefore all clothes are dryer-safe. After dryer, clothes are piled on couch. When clean clothes are needed, they’re on the couch.
You can probably get away with socks and underwear just being tossed in a drawer. I actually find button-up shirts easier to deal with than t-shirts because hanging is easier than folding.
You can hang t-shirts too though
Yeah, but it’s more of a pain, and I don’t have enough closet space for all my t-shirts in addition to pants and button-ups
why won’t it be accepted any more? Does your family care more about the state of your closet than you being happy?
Seriously, talk to them about it, tell them how you feel.If there’s a system that works for you and isn’t impacting others why not do it? My entire family basically lives out of laundry baskets and chaos drawers. We don’t fold our clothes. If something gets a little wrinkled we toss it in the dryer for a second before we wear it.
I don’t know, I just think for me at least, as someone with Audhd I grew up being told there were “rules” to keeping a clean house like only run the dishwasher full, or sort your laundry by color… but they are sort of old dumb rules.
A full dishwasher means I’m literally out of dishes for my small family, laundry can be washed on cold and be fine for most things, just find systems you can live with and follow… screw the rules.
Running a half full dishwasher is more efficient on water than washing a single pan by hand. The old rules are dumb
Even not running a full dishwasher we’re still only running it once a week, if not longer. We tend to reuse dishes if they can be i.e. made popcorn twice this week and just keep using the same bowl cause why not.
Running a modern half full dishwasher is more efficient on water than washing a single pan by hand.
The old rules were in place because old stuff wasn’t as efficient. It used to be less resource heavy to fill a single sink and wash all your dishes with that.
I often put on a podcast while folding laundry to entertain myself…
Clothes don’t have to go in the closet. If they’re your clothes and they don’t get in anyone’s way, your family doesn’t have a right to complain about you storing them on a pile on your bedroom floor, if putting clothes away is making you so miserable.
Alternatively, maybe strike up a deal with another household member for them to do your laundry in exchange for you doing some other household chore for them (e.g. you’ll take out the bins when it’s their turn to do the bins, you’ll cook all their meals, etc).
Find a partner who doesn’t mind doing laundry.
I genuinely love laundry so I’m not sure I’m the best person to comment but here are a few suggestions:
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as others have said, get a set of drawers so that you can just chuck different clothing items in different drawers. If there’s no space for that you could get some storage containers/baskets for smaller items in your closet.
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Try rolling up your clothes rather than folding them. This is often recommended for packing but I always do it. It saves space and you can roll a bunch of clothes quickly and they’re easy to move from where you’re folding to the wardrobe. This image gives a rough idea, but you can find tonnes of videos as well:
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