Confessions of a mad housewife

(Not mad as in angry. Mad as in crazy. Like the mad hatter, but without all the hair.)

Prepare yourselves. I'm about to revel a deep dark secret.

Are you ready?

I don't sort my laundry before I wash it.

Gasp! How can I live with myself?!

The truth is that I used to sort my laundry into whites, lights and darks. Depending on the season each pile would be a different size. In winter the darks pile was always really big and needed to be separated into two loads. In the summer the whites and lights piles were bigger. That usually left me with at least one, if not two, small loads of laundry. It also left me with way more piles of laundry than I wanted to tackle.

I don't even remember when I decided that sorting was for the birds, but one day I just did it. I threw things in the machine, willy nilly, until it was full. And I haven't looked back.

The result? The clothes are just as clean, and now I only wash two or three loads of laundry each week, compared to the four to six (depending on the season) I was doing. That isn't including linens, but hello time saver!

And detergent, water and energy saver! That crap's expensive!

I can hear you all saying, "But what about fading? How do you keep your white socks white and not pink?"

Well, these days most things are pre-rinsed when you buy them. It isn't usually an issue to throw that new red dress in with those crisp white undershirts. But just in case, I wash everything in cold water. It works just as well as warm and is easier on clothes.

Did you know that when a garment shrinks in the wash the shrinkage is mostly caused by washing in water that is too warm? Not in the dryer. The heat of the dryer will cause a little more shrinkage, but most of the damage is done in the wash. True story.

So there you have it. I'm totally living on the cutting edge of housekeeping.

Try it next time laundry day rolls around. We might just start a revolution.