How to Do Laundry When Life Gets Overwhelming: A Survival Guide
Let's talk about laundry—not as another item on your endless to-do list, but as a reflection of your current life season. You might have been taught that there's a single "right" way to do laundry: perfectly folded, immediately put away, color-coded, meticulously sorted, or some combination of some of that. But life has a way of teaching us that perfection is a myth, and basic survival is sometimes the only bar we can meet.
“It’s about recognizing that your laundry routine isn’t a measure of your worth, but a practical task that can be adapted to support your current reality.”
Whether you're a new parent drowning in tiny onesies, a professional juggling multiple responsibilities, a caregiver supporting a loved one, dealing with mental illness, or simply navigating a particularly challenging chapter of life, this post is your permission slip to do laundry differently. It's about recognizing that your laundry routine isn't a measure of your worth, but a practical task that can be adapted to support your current reality.
In the next few paragraphs, I'm going to share several strategies that might help you not just manage your laundry but actually make it work for you—strategies that prioritize your mental health, your energy, and your unique life circumstances. Sometimes, thriving means letting go of impossible standards and finding an approach that truly serves you right now.
Helpful Strategies:
If you are in a chapter with small children, could you put everyone's clothes into a single closet or room? This makes dressing everyone in the morning much easier.
Or maybe children get dressed in an area of the home near the washer and dryer instead of in their room. This would make laundry putting away much easier!
How important is it for you to put clothing away? Could that cease to matter for this chapter of life? For example, if your kid just dresses themselves all week from a basket of clean clothes straight from the laundry (instead of from a closet or set of drawers), could that work? If so, let it be OK to do it that way.
Some folks find hanging everything a lot easier than folding it and makes everything really easy to see. I happen to hate hanging clothing, so this wouldn't work for me, but it's morally neutral how you handle clothing. You get to decide what works best for you!
Is there anything you're folding that doesn't need to be folded? Many of my categories have no folding involved (underthings, pajamas, I don't even pair socks anymore; they just all go into a drawer with other like items, and nothing is folded). Not a single piece of clothing for my elementary-aged kids gets folded, and it's fine so far.
Could you wash things by category or person so that there's less sorting? For example, towels in one load, clothes for person X in another, clothes for person Y in another?
If you just really hate laundry and have the means, what if you outsourced it and supported someone else financially? In my research, services like Poplin cost about $1 per load (if it's helpful, I weighed my laundry years ago when it was just my husband and me, and about a week of our dirty laundry was 13 pounds). A gift card to this service also makes an excellent gift for someone in a tough chapter of life (recovering from an illness or injury, newborn care, recent loss, elder care, etc.).
Want more tips?
If you’d like more tips like these, my popular Friday Five Newsletter is the best place to get them every week! Join the newsletter below!
About The Author
Jessica Eastman Stewart is a consultant, workshop facilitator, and podcast guest expert. She teaches busy professionals how to get more organized at home and at work so they can stop feeling worn out and start living a Joyfully Managed Life! Thousands of readers drop everything when her weekly newsletter, The Friday Five, arrives in their inbox. Every Friday, you’ll get FIVE amazing tips to help life feel INSTANTLY more joyful and easy!
