The part I despise the most is putting them in the closet. I’ve tried many solutions, but I’ve not found any that made the job less tedious.
When I was a student, I just threw my clothes into various shelves based on the type and considered that good enough. I did not fold clothes ever. I just threw the boxers in one shelf, the socks in another, T-shirts in another, pants in another.
As an adult with a family, this won’t be accepted anymore.
I had a period in which I had a dryer, but I did not find that it saved me a lot of time because the fastest way to get the laundry into the shelves and the hangers is by sorting it first. And if I had to sort it anyways, I could just sort it on the drying rack and put it on the hangers on the drying rack.
I think it’s fairly hard to find solutions to fix this.
I have considered mapping out each step, and then try to identify the pain points. Then find ways to remove as much friction as possible. Kind of like how an UX designer would handle this.
OK, so I have ADHD and absolutely hate tasks like laundry. I have found a few different solutions which have worked at various points in time depending on my available means.
When I was drying clothing by hanging I started hanging my t-shirts on hangers to dry. This meant I could get them out to dry in one handful and that once dry they could all just be put into the wardrobe with no extra fuss. Underwear and socks were handled by hanging on a little clothes horse and then just thrown in together into a drawer. I make sure to only have one type of identical sock so I can not pair them.
Now that was all good and fine but my means have increased and life has gotten better, so my methods have changed. I can now afford a heat pump dryer. This is an absolute game changer. I put washing on, when it is done I move it from the washing machine to the dryer, then when it is done I put it away.
The dryer is super efficient, using way less power than a traditional dryer and hurting the clothing way less. It uses the same system as an air conditioner to pull moisture out of the air while it throws the clothes through the warm dry air.
Because I have enough clothes now I can also do a smalls load and a separate load for just t-shirts and then all the other clothes like pants and jumpers. Because of that I can sort the smalls much faster and then put them in my new storage.
I have an 8 cube shelf. In each cube I have a fabric box which has one type of item. I have two for t-shirts, two for pants, one for underwear, one for socks, and two for anything else. I just dump items in with no folding or sorting. If I want a shirt I can pick the colour but because all the shirts are the same brand and model that is the only difference I have to deal with. My pants are basically all of a type and are really only summer or winter gear, so I just have long pants on one box and shorts in the other.
The great thing is the simplicity. Shirts are never folded, rolled, or in any other way managed. They are just thrown in. I try to empty one first and then fill that one first from the dryer so they all get rotated through, otherwise they would go musty after a time, but apart from that it is super low effort.
I also have the same for towels and bedsheets, but for bedsheets I put the full set inside one pillow case with the fitted sheet as the last item in so when I use them I pull out and apply the fitted sheet, then the flat sheet, then the second pillowcase to cover the pillows. My kitchen stuff is also similar with a single basket on top of the fridge with tea towels and microfibre cloths so I can just replace them daily or more as needed. I really should put a mini basket in the kitchen for the dirty ones but for now I just throw them into the laundry.
Overall I spend less electricity washing clothes and drying them in the dryer than I did rewashing clothes I had put off hanging. I think it is a worthy trade and saves me from avoiding the washing too much.