BabyStep 20: Airing My Dirty Laundry

Sort, wash, dry, fold, put away, wear, sort, wash, dry, fold, put away, wear, sort, wash, dry, fold... you get the point. Laundry: it's a vicious cycle, isn't it? It's also something that almost everyone has in common, unless you are wealthy (and ridiculous) enough to be able to wear something once, get rid of it, and buy something new. (Psst: If there really are any people like that out there, I'm open to the idea of being adopted...)

FlyLady wants me to make doing the laundry part of my routines. If you peruse her site you will find pearls of wisdom such as "A load a day keeps CHAOS away!", and "Tackle Mt. Washmore!" The idea behind this is that it will prevent the laundry from piling up and becoming the big tedious project that we all know and detest. Nothin' says love like clean underwear!

She suggests making laundry part of my morning and evening routines, but that's not going to happen.
In my last apartment I was lucky enough to have a laundry room right inside my unit, so it was no problem to start my daily load before I went to work and then throw it in the dryer when I got home in the afternoon. I trained myself to put the load away as soon as it came out of the dryer so I wouldn't be living out of a laundry basket, and the whole system worked great.

Unfortunately things have since changed. The house I now live in is an old home that was converted into 4 apartments, 3 of which are currently rented including ours, with 2 people living in each unit. This makes total 6 people living here. 6 people who all share 1 washer and dryer. I don't like this math.

If I were to start a load in the morning now I would run a high risk of someone else coming along wanting to use the laundry room while I was still at work, and that wouldn't be very neighborly of me. I also encounter times when I am all geared up and ready to put a load in only to find that someone has gotten there before me. All I can really do is be flexible and do my laundry in the afternoons.

Oh, how I miss having my own laundry room. Not only could I do laundry whenever I wanted, but now "throwing in a load" is more akin to taking a trek to Outer Mongolia. First, I go into the bathroom where I keep my dirty laundry basket:

(Ignore the book, I read in the tub. So cliché.)  Then I walk through the kitchen...

...and around the corner to the apartment's door:

Outside the apartment door I find myself in the hallway, where I then have to carry the basket down the stairs to the first floor:

(This is the part that sucks if it's raining.)  Once I am downstairs I go out the door onto the front porch, turn to the right, then have to walk around to the back of the house:

At the back of the house I find myself at another doorway leading to the dungeon basement stairs:

After I carefully maneuver the stairs, I wind up in this little gem of a laundry room:

It's damp, smelly, and home to plenty of bugs.  Charming. 

I hope you enjoyed this little tour, but I'd better get back to my Zone work and Weekly Home Blessing or FlyLady's gonna have my hide...