Monday Mess

I'm thinking about doing less book reviews this year. Just one every now and then to keep things interesting, but not just about one a week or every other week like I did last year. I like reading, but it's tough to read almost 40 books in a year because at the end you realize as much as you enjoyed all or most of them, you didn't really have time to linger with them afterwards that helps them change your life.
So instead, I'm thinking about doing this Monday Mess thing. After all, the blog is called HoHa (Hands on Home arts) for a reason. Though this last year, I did not share very much of my art. The thing is I believe that the majority of what we do as home makers is a form of art that isn't always appreciated and doesn't always feel like it in the midst of it or even at the end of it or ever at all if I'm honest. But deep down, I want to believe that caring for my home is a form of art and that I want to share that with you all. So today, I'm trying out this idea in my head called Monday Mess. My mess today is Laundry.

Every week, it needs to be done, sometimes more than once a week. We have three in our household, that tallies up to about one load per person in regards to clothes. We have bed linens, which I do not do nearly often enough, and then there are towels and table linens. Yes, you read that right, I do use cloth on our table instead of paper. I like to make things complicated and we don't use a lot of paper towels, normally just for camping and company.

Any way, this is what I've found that has helped make my laundry days so much easier. I do our clothes on one day and the other laundry a different day every other week. Yes, that's right, ever other week. I'm a slacker, I have enough towels that I can pull the dirty ones out and still wait another week to wash. But this is the real tip that I want to share with you.

It has to do with the dryer. Before I used the automatic dry, to more dry. I would put clothes in, come back when the buzzer went off and discover that my clothes were still wet. I would do the whole thing over again. I never knew how long it would take for them to get dry. It would take me all day to do three loads of clothes. Now, it takes me about 3 and 3/4 hours, exactly! The difference is the timed dry. I go down on the half hour and put my first load in. On the hour, I put the load in the dryer, set it to dry for 60-70 minutes, start the next load. On the next hour, I go change out all the laundry, fold the dry and put it away. Because I know the laundry will be dry and that it's on the hour, I can manage my time while it's doing it's stuff downstairs, too. It's a much more efficient way to do laundry. Try it some time.

What's your biggest laundry tip?