Do laundry, broken into 6 small steps
Laundry is never one task. It's gather, sort, wash, dry, fold and put away, and somewhere around "fold" it usually turns into a mountain of clean clothes on a chair.
The fix is to plan for the step you always skip. If putting away is where it dies, make folding and putting away one move, not two.
Start here · under 2 minutes
Gather dirty clothes into one basket.
Under two minutes: bedroom floor, bathroom, the chair.
The rest of the steps
- Step 2:
Sort into two piles: darks and lights.
That's enough sorting for most loads. Towels can go with whichever is smaller.
- Step 3:
Start one load.
Detergent, button, done. One load is a complete job.
- Step 4:
Set a timer on your phone for when it ends.
This is the step that saves the whole thing. Don't trust yourself to remember.
- Step 5:
Move it to the dryer or hang it.
As soon as the timer goes off. Set another timer for the dryer.
- Step 6:
Fold straight into the drawer.
Fold each item and put it away right away, instead of making a folded pile to deal with later.
Why this one stalls
The washer finishes while you're doing something else, there's no reminder, and wet clothes sit there until they need washing again.
If you get stuck
Clean clothes on a chair still count as clean. If folding is the wall, use bins: one for tops, one for bottoms, no folding. Progress over perfect.
What “done” looks like
An empty basket and no clothes waiting in the machine.
These steps follow the same rules as the method in our task breakdown guide: the first step is physical and takes under two minutes, and every step after it is something you can see yourself doing. Got a head full of other things too? Start with a brain dump.