Does Decluttering Actually Decrease Laundry?

“How is it possible that decluttering decreases laundry if I wear the same amount of clothes in a week?”

I get this question quite a bit, so let’s talk about it.

First of all, your math is, in fact, mathing. Congratulations!

Are you technically doing less laundry as a whole if you decrease the amount of clothing you own? I guess not really.

So why have I said a few times on The Paring Down Podcast the decluttering decreases laundry? AM I A LIAR??

Depends on how you look at it.

I think that, mostly, decluttering decreases laundry STRESS, if not the laundry itself. Owning less clothing makes you FEEL like you have less laundry to do, because procrastination is not an option. If I skip two or three days of laundry, my sons start to run out of shorts and shirts.

By being forced to do laundry more often, my piles are smaller than back when we had a lot of clothing, so the time spent on it never feels overwhelming. I’m never staring down a mountain that feels like it might suffocate me in a cotton avalanche with any wrong move.

Doing laundry 4-5x a week — each time only taking 10 minutes or less to fold — feels WAY less horrible to me than doing laundry once every week or two and spending a solid hour or more folding and putting it all away…or feeling burnt out by the giant pile, so letting it just sit in the basket or on the floor for days at a time.

Doing laundry 3-7x a week (depending on your preference) also makes it much more of a routine, which decreases the dread of the one big laundry day that always feels like a heavy lift. Rhythms and routines grant us momentum and habits, two forces which cut down on the work of mentally gearing ourselves up for something we don’t love doing.

Big picture: Decluttering mostly just decreases laundry STRESS, but isn’t that the part we’re most concerned with anyway? The feeling revolving around laundry, not the laundry itself?

I will say that decluttering DOES decrease laundry itself in the sense that putting clothes away is much faster when drawers and closets aren’t jam-packed. There’s no wrestling clothes back in anywhere since there’s lots of margin, which decreases the amount of time it takes to put things back where they belong.

But long story long…sorry for lying to you.

Decluttering probably doesn’t really alter the amount of detergent you use.

However, it WILL alter the amount of stress you feel. And that’s worth more than detergent, ten-fold.

TEN FOLD?? Couldn’t have dreamt up a more perfect laundry pun if I’d tried. It just came out. The writer in me is so happy.

Happy laundering!