Woman's Work: Laundry Basket

I believe you should live each day as if it is your last, which is why I don't have any clean laundry, because, come on, who wants to wash clothes on the last day of their life? –Unknown

Of all the household chores, laundry is the one that I will never complain about. Or perhaps I should say it is the one I mind the least, because it is funny and dramatic to say, Mt. Saint Laundry is calling, or, I have to conquer Mt. Washmore today. But if the truth be told, the machines do all the work and we have it really easy. When I lived in Brasil, I did my own laundry by hand for about a year of that time, and washing jeans and towels {or really anything} in a stone sink basin and then wringing them out to dry is a very laborious process. I knew women who would start their day, every day, at the crack of dawn with their family's laundry, and not be finished until well into the afternoon. I count myself lucky that sorting a week's worth of laundry takes all of twenty minutes; that I can throw a load in the washer in less that five minutes {counting pre-treating all the stains} and come back 50 minutes later to find all the hard work done. With a few exceptions, all of that can go in the dryer and in 30 to 60 more minutes, I have a load of clean, bright, fresh smelling clothes which can be folded at my leisure while watching TV. Yes, laundry may take all day, but the bulk of the work is done by machines.

This laundry basket was really fun to appliqué. As I was selecting fabrics for it, I thought, this has to be the worst-sorted load of laundry in the history of laundry, because I sort my laundry not just into darks, mediums and lights, but by color. Then I realized that a monochromatic basket of laundry would have been very boring in this quilt, so I just had fun with it, imagining that this is what was left in the basket after several loads has been dumped in and picked through. I took inspiration from Lori's quilt, using red with big white polka-dots for one piece of laundry and choosing a really cool striped fabric for one of the socks. But for the most part, I picked fabrics that I thought looked nice to make up my basket of laundry. And the basket itself? Well, I searched high and low before I found this perfect basket-weave fabric and I absolutely love how it came out.

Over the years, I've honed my laundry skills and I think I do a fairly decent job. It is totally because I let the machines do all of the work. Here are a few tricks I've learned.
• Hot water sets in stains. I wash every load in cold water, which is good for several reasons; it is green {saves energy on heating the water}, it keeps clothes from fading, it keeps clothes from shrinking {if you don't put them in the dryer}, and if you missed anything in the pre-treat, it is more likely to come out in cold water.
• When treating clothes for stains, do it just before you throw the clothes in the wash as the water is running {rather than when you take the item off and put it in the laundry}. Also, most stains happen on the front of clothes, so if you're pressed for time, you can skip the backs of shirts.
• Let the machines do all the work — set every load to agitate for the maximum time setting on your machine.
• Don't overload your machine. Your clothes will come out better in two medium loads than one extra gigantic load. Also, use the right amount of soap for your load size. Too much detergent is just as bad as not enough.
• Contrary to popular belief, it is the washer, not the dryer, that eats stocks. Stick your head in the dryer and have a look around. There is no place for them to go. They slip down the drain in the drain/rinse cycle in the washer, so if the mis-matched sock pile drives you nuts, put your socks in mesh laundry bags in the wash.
• When drying sheets and blankets {or cuts of fabric for quilting} throw a set of dryer balls {or jumbo-size bouncy balls, which I like better} in with them. It helps keep the fabrics from wadding up into a giant ball and they will dry faster.

I hope that helps lighten your load a little. I'm off to conquer Mt. Washmore .