Laundry Day

I could do laundry every single day if I had a washer dryer in my apartment. My building has a really nice laundry room with efficient machines - a room I treat like it's another room in my apartment. But it's not. I still have to take the cart downstairs and put quarters in. Am I the only one who feels like a major schmuck paying to do my own laundry? Hey, here's $10 bucks, now put me to work!

I fantasize about the washer dryer being in my apartment, in which case, I feel like I would do a load an hour. I could, you know. With all of our clothes -- my husbands workout clothes, my workout clothes (when I choose to work out), my son's clothes (sometimes two outfits a day, depending on what he eats and whether or not he decides to tell me when he has to go potty), sheets, towels and the occasional stuffed animal -- I could probably do a load a day. But for the reasons cited above, I don't. I have a laundry day.

Well, having laundry on the brain, I decided to see if there was anything that I could do differently to conserve water while schmucking my way to clean clothes. Turns out, the fact that I find laundry a pain in the rear has made my methods of doing laundry more water-conservation friendly. Why? Well, given that my lazy butt waits until a certain day in the week to do it, means that I have pile the size of Mount Yuckamuckastinky. Therefore, I end up - without OVER stuffing the machine mind you - put as much into the washer as I can while still ensuring that the clothes will actually get clean. This is because I want to consolidate the laundry into as FEW loads as possible. Why? Well, of course, this is because I HATE doing laundry.

To all you people who want everyone to smell Tide before you even round the corner, you might want to wait just an extra day or so to ensure that you are using your washing machine at its full capacity. This will use less water. Of course, you might also be the kind of person who likes to sort every article down to the lint on your socks. But, sorry to say that the lazies like me score another point with the earth. If you wash everything in cold (I do, because this means that you can throw everything in together) then you will save a ton of energy. Turns our that 90 percent of the energy used doing laundry is actually from heating up the water. And before you blame your detergent for needing hot water, there are brands, like Seventh Generation, that are specially made for doing laundry in cold water.

Hey, I'm clean, okay! Come over and take a whiff if you want. (Well, maybe not right now. It was very warm today...) Turns out, my sob story of not having a washer dryer in my apartment actually did some good for the earth. I'm not so jealous of all you with your fancy appliances in the house! (Lie...)