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Victory Over the Laundry Monster One Step at a Time

Habit #3

Mary DeVries
2 min readApr 3, 2021
Photo by Bruce de Kock on Unsplash

“Everyone knows the best time to do laundry is later.” — Emily Hampshire

My hatred of laundry began when my mom got a full-time job outside the home when I was 13. We all had to pitch in and I was given the assignment of doing the family’s laundry. Since there were nine of us in the house at the time, it was a never-ending daily task.

Every time we move I need to get on top of a new laundry routine. Where does dirty laundry accumulate? What about clean laundry waiting for folding and putting away?

When the pandemic hit and the first lockdown in the UK coincided with sunny spring weather, hanging laundry outside to dry became one of my hobbies. I would watch my shirts and socks waving in the breeze while I sat on my sofa watching Tiger King and feel like I had accomplished something with my day.

I stayed on top of the job because I could only really fit one load on the line at a time.

A wet winter with its short days put an end to that habit. Now the dirty clothes pile up until we start running out of underwear. The clean clothes pile up on the bed in what was intended as a guest room, later became a dorm room away from college, and now has morphed into my husband’s walk-in closet.

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Mary DeVries
Mary DeVries

Written by Mary DeVries

I delight, despair and write about a life lived around the world. Fueled by Yorkshire Gold tea.

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