Your Family Has Way Too Many Clothes And That Is Why You Can’t Keep Up With Laundry

Get ready to change your whole way of thinking when it comes to laundry, because I this is huge.

As I was going through my daughter’s laundry basket, folding those tiny underwear, I realized something. I only had to wash her underwear once every thirty days because she owned 30 pairs of underwear.

At first I was like, “Hell yeah, living the dream.” And then I realized something… I had to fold 30 pairs of tiny underwear on a Sunday afternoon. Do you know how long that takes?

A LONG TIME.

So, I tried an experiment, I went through, picked out her favorites and was down to 9 pairs. 9 pairs was more than enough to get through the week on (we went with 9 because you never know) but it didn’t take up an entire drawer of her dresser anymore. And I could fold up those pairs pretty dang quick. So I gave her nine pairs of underwear, in fact, I took the whole family down to only enough underwear for the week, and I just made it a point to wash underwear once a week.

YOU GUYS this was life changing. Instead of what was actually over a hundred pairs of underwear that needed washing, there was less than thirty. For my whole family.

Do you realize how little space that takes up? It wasn’t even a full load of clothes! I could take those tony underwear stacks and just hand them to people to go put away. It was no longer an event to fold the stuff, it was done in seconds.

Oh, and because it was so few pairs, I could hand them to my little girl and she could fold them herself. Suddenly she was doing chores that weren’t overwhelming!

Of course folding ALL of her underwear before was overwhelming to her, it was overwhelming to ME and I am a full grown adult.

So, the next thing I did was try it with socks. My kid had a LOT of socks. But we went through, picked out the favorites, and got rid of the rest. AND BOOM– no more stray socks laying all around the house. Why? Because there weren’t any stray socks to SPARE.

We each only had enough for the week.

(Side note, did you know that some people put pepper in their laundry? True story.)

So we started doing this with all our clothes. Now each of us only owns enough clothes to get through one week. Nobody in my family owns more than a load of laundry.

We save on space in closets and dressers, AND we get to pick out cute stuff. When you only own nine pairs of underwear, you don’t have to buy the ugly stuff in a bag. You get to pick and choose from the cuteness over on the table in the department store!

And when they start to get old or tattered, they aren’t an arm and a leg to replace!

There is NEVER a giant pile of clothes in my house because we don’t own enough clothing to make that happen. We are never more than four loads of laundry away from having eery single thing in my house washed. (And that would really be if every single piece of clothing in my house is dirty. The reality is we usually only have about a load of dirty stuff at once.)

So give this a try. If you aren’t willing to give away all your clothes and possessions just yet, that’s okay. Bag up what you don’t want to use for this little experiment in a trash bag, and just keep your favorites in your drawer and in your closet.

If, after a month or two of not using your extra stuff you don’t miss it, take those trash bags straight to charity! And enjoy your nice, laundry-pile free house.