Laundry Myth: Fewer clothes doesn’t make less laundry

Minimalism Myth: “Owning fewer clothes means less laundry to wash!”

Ummmm….

Okay.

So.

Math is sort of one of my big things, and this is just mathematically wrong.

Math Fact: You will have less laundry to do when you wash fewer clothes.

It doesn’t matter how many clothes you own. It just matters how many are going into a laundry basket at the end of the day.

Think about it.

On Monday, all five members of my family bring to the laundry room a full set of pajamas, and a full set of clothes from the day. (Let’s make that two for the baby.) For us, that’s basically a full load of laundry just from what we wore on Monday.

If we want to actually have fewer clothes to wash, we would need to wear our clothes multiple times before washing them, but honestly, we rarely rewear clothes. Two teens and a baby? Yeah, we’re washing it after we wear it.

The amount of laundry produced on Monday isn’t affected by how many more clean clothes are remaining in closet. There might be one change of clothes or fifty – I still have a full load of clothes from Monday alone.

So, are you saying there is no benefit to owning fewer clothes?!

Not. At. All.

There are so many benefits to owning fewer clothes, starting with the feeling of excitement I hope you’ll feel each time you open your closet or a drawer and see only clothes that you are excited to wear. You deserve that.

Fewer clothes in your wardrobe = more frequent laundry = no more laundry mountains

Owning fewer clothes is a cost/benefit situation.

The cost of fewer clothes:

You have to be prepared to do laundry very frequently. So when choosing how many outfits to keep, consider how often you can realistically do laundry. If you can only do laundry on weekends, you’re going to need more clothes than someone who can do it daily, for example.

The benefit of fewer clothes:

You can’t procrastinate on laundry.

No more rewashing the same load all week because you keep forgetting about it in the washer (I know I’m not the only one who has struggled with this).

And no more laundry mountains covering and spilling off of a kind-sized bed, because you have eliminated those backup clothes that allowed you to procrastinate.

Have laundry routine questions? I’d love to hear them and address them in a future post!!!

Wishing you every success on your decluttering journey!

~ Danie

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