Optimize Your Laundry System

Let’s turn the forum talk about cognitive load into actual talk about loads. I do believe that no one party being stuck with too much unwanted cognitive load in a partnership is important. I also believe that there exist practices for decreasing general cognitive load, among everything, so that nobody is doing too much cognitive load. This usually requires going through each specific task, one by one, and making it as easy as possible to both do the task in the moment, and as part of a system in which other things are happening (often more important things).

There are two main factors to consider.

The first is coordination with your partner. If you are alone, you do not have to worry about this, but perhaps you do have to contend with your own beliefs about what the task means in terms of your broader spirituality or what it means in terms of your self-conception.

(For example, perhaps being a man who does not do his laundry ever, is spiritually important somehow.)

(Or perhaps being a woman who does everybody’s laundry all the time feels somehow demeaning.)

The second factor is to actually set up the physical process of accomplishing the task.

As for the first, coordinating with your partner —

Sometimes this involves both people coming together, deciding neither of them wants to do something, and paying someone else to do it.

Sometimes it involves both people coming together and working out a system such that both of them could do it if they wanted to, easily.

Sometimes it involves one person owning the system for some time, figuring out how to optimize it for ease, and then looping their partner in once that process is done. (Note if a failure of looping-in occurs, there may be a situation in which the optimizer ends up the the default owner of the task for a while, but not optimizing because of this fear is not great — you can just stop doing it again.)

Depending on your specific circumstances, some of these options may be easier than others.

Perhaps you have a lot of money, and not much time to talk to your partner. Perhaps your partner really does not want to be involved, and you do have to figure it out yourself and loop them in later. Perhaps your partner really really wants to be involved, or has specific things they want to do, and you cannot just take it over even though if you may want to just take it over.

There are lots of variations on partner coordination. Regardless on which options around partner coordination are available to you, there are a few task-level guidelines which generally can make it easier.

Have the correct number of baskets

You stay at somebody’s house. You want to be a good guest so you take your sheets and pillowcases and take them to the washing machine. You run the wash. You wait 40 minutes. You move them over. Oh wait there is a ton of stuff in the dryer. There are no baskets around. You cannot move anything out of the dryer unless you put it like…on top? But then would it fall? And you can’t keep the stuff wet…um…

This is a washing machine. Unless you are in europe, also a drying machine. These are machines. When you think machines to make your life easier, also think assembly lines.

Doing the laundry is an assembly line. There is a straightforward, repetitive process, that runs every time. Sometimes there are variations. Most of the variations include “does this delicate item go into the dryer with everything else, or go elsewhere” and “what setting do I put this dryer on.”

Most of the time for most things just do warm and then tumble dry low. Warm actually cleans things, unlike cold, and drying on low keeps most things from getting damaged.

If people disagree on default laundry settings, please tell me in the comments.

But the point is there are only a few variations, and one of those doesn’t even really have to be a variation.

And so you really want to optimize flow, because that is where people get stuck.

First — is there detergent? Just always have a backup, and don’t throw it out when it’s empty. The easiest way for another person to “buy more” is for them to see which one got empty and just buy that exact same one again. That way there is not guessing. Ideally you’d have a spare around because you bought a few, but if for some reason some runs out, whoever is there, your partner, or the guest, or anyone, can just replace it.

Secondly, you want a spot for things that are wet, that do not go into the dryer. That is the first fork in the flow.

Then things go into the dryer. Great.

Lint mesh. Is there a place for people to throw the lint into?

Great.

Is there a basket for things inside of the dryer to go into, before they are being sorted?

Now — and this is important — the basket for clean things needs to be obviously different from the basket for dirty things, for your own health and sanity.

Perhaps they differ by shape. The from-the-dryer ones tend to be wide at the top. The not-even-washed-yet ones usually are narrow at the top.

You can also just do different colors. Black for dirty, white for clean.

Whatever makes sense with your sense of aesthetics and sense of decor. But do not be cheap and just have one.

Just having one laundry basket is a way to mess up your entire flow and start to go insane.

That is how laundry becomes a hard task that nobody wants to do.

(I am very tired, maybe will rewrite this soon)