How To NOT Do Laundry

1. Assess your laundry basket: Is it overflowing onto the floor? Is it almost too heavy to carry (i.e., does it weigh eleventybillion pounds)? No – it’s not laundry time yet. Yes – it’s laundry time.
2. Carry laundry basket to the washer and dryer. Set it down on top of one of these machines (unless you’re fancy and have special cool machines, in which case, go to hell, I mean, set it on the ground) and walk away for several hours and/or days.
3. Are you on your second or more day of wearing dirty underwear? No – meh, another day won’t kill you. Yes – proceed to step #4.
4. Return to abandoned basket in laundry area. Open the lid of the washer and find clothes already in there from a load you started a couple weeks ago. Decide you’ll just go commando.
5. After a day of realizing how uncomfortable it is to go commando – open washer lid and remove the old, formerly wet but now hard, moldy clothes.
6. Discover that the dryer is also still full from another previous load. At this point you should let out a scream of anguish and frustration about how unfair life is. Then pile the wet laundry from the washer on top of closest open area (e.g., top of the dryer).
7. Start grabbing items out of the dirty laundry basket and put them in the washer. Put as much as you possibly can in the washer – you should need to sit on the lid in order to make it close. (Do not bother separating items by color as this will take more time away from your precious non-laundry time.)
8. Wash on whatever setting matches your mood. (I like the notch somewhere between Regular and Permanent Press, but I fluctuate between Warm/Cold and Cold/Cold.)
9. Move on to something else and immediately forget that you started about laundry.
10. Wake up the next morning to find that you still don’t have underwear. Retrieve a wet pair from the washer and throw them in the dryer. Wait 10 to 20 minutes.
11. Realize that said underwear is now lost in an overstuffed dryer. Pull everything out of the dryer and onto the floor, preferably next to the pile of dried dog barf and mud. Find underwear stuck inside a pair of pants. Leave other dry clothes on the floor because you do not have time to deal with laundry right now.
12. Return after a stressful workday and decide tonight will be the night you finish your laundry. For real.
13. Gather dry laundry from floor. Spend several seconds analyzing proximity of dog barf and mud; smell the clothes. Do they smell clean? Yes – they are clean. No – dude, they are clean enough.
14. Toss dry clothes into laundry basket. Take basket full of dry, clean-ish clothes and put it on top of your bed, which will surely force you to fold them before going to sleep.
15. Remove newly washed clothes and throw them in the dryer. Again, pick a setting that corresponds with you present mood. (I tend to prefer Mostly Dry/Medium Heat/Fluff.)
16. Decide the old, wet clothes piled on top of the dryer now need to be rewashed because Febreeze won’t cover up that mold smell (trust me). See step #7.
17. Now you’re tired, and despite the buzzer alerting you every 15 minutes that a load of laundry has completed its cycle, you’ve already decided that tomorrow will be the day you finish your laundry. For real. (This also means you can skip folding the basket of clean-ish clothes on the bed and just put it on the ground next to your closet.)
18. Wake up the following morning and retrieve clothing as necessary from the dryer. Repeat for 3 to 4 days.
19. When roommate/spouse tells you they need to do their laundry and they start asking you annoying, inconsiderate questions like, “Do you know when you’ll be done with the washer and dryer?” tell them you’re “Right on top of that, Rose!” even if you’re not really on top of it.
20. At some point during the next couple of days, acknowledge your laundry situation. Set the dryer to 30 minutes/Tumble Press. Walk away. This will give you enough time to completely forget about doing laundry for another week.
21. Do not return to laundry area again until you have acquired another loads-worth of dirty laundry. Realize that you’ve been putting your dirty clothes in the basket of unfolded clean-ish clothes, which you never folded after removing from dryer two-plus weeks ago.
22. Start over at #1 and repeat steps as necessary. (Alternative: wait for your roommate/spouse to remove your clothes, fold them for you and place them in your room.)