How Not to Do Housework: Laundry

Those who read the first installment in my instruction series on avoiding housework already know that I have a love-hate relationship with chores, mostly hate. My first chapter had to do with avoiding cleaning the floor (How Not to Do Housework). In this installment, I deal with laundry.

To say that I hate doing laundry is not an exaggeration. The thought of schlepping a bag full of dirty clothes and another bag of detergent and fabric softener down to my building’s laundry room, loading one or two machines, turning them on, waiting for them to run a cycle, then loading the contents into a dryer … please excuse me for a moment. I think I’m hyperventilating.

Okay, now I feel better. You get the idea.

There is one way to lessen the frequency of this awful fate: keep buying clothes, especially underwear, so that you always have something clean.

There is also one rule of thumb: if a dress, a skirt, a pair of pants, a blouse, or a shirt doesn’t smell bad and doesn’t have any spots on it, it’s probably clean enough to wear. Remember that. It will save you having to buy something new every time you have to get dressed.

As for underwear, the more you have, the better. You will probably forget how many pairs you own. Whenever you run out of clean underwear, buy some new ones.

All good things come to an end, however. Eventually, you will get tired of looking at the ever-growing pile of dirty clothes and decide to wash them. Warning: all those pairs of underwear will make a pile too big to put in one underwear drawer. You will need some extra storage room. You might have to buy a new chest of drawers.

This brings us to the primary problem of my proposed system of avoiding laundry: money. To make this system work, you need a decent amount of disposable income. Clothes are not cheap, even when you spend half your life hunting for bargains. You might want to consider taking a second job if you can find one.

I hope my little essay has been helpful. There will be more to come.