Julie Helen: 'I've set a deadline to get on top of the laundry'

I have an aim to be on top of the household laundry by the end of this year. 

The organised among you, who see the bottom surface of your laundry basket each week, will rightly scoff at me, wondering why I need over a six-week lead in time to master a simple, basic household task. 

Others of you, who live in the same state of scrambling through life as I do, may breathe a sigh of relief to know that you are not alone in the seemingly insurmountable task of washing, drying and putting away of every stitch of clothes we own. Don’t even get me started on the drawer full of odd socks that seems to multiply week on week, no matter what.

I want to remind readers that in relative terms I’m pretty new at this full-blown grown up malarkey of running a household. We moved in 18 months ago and I vowed that all systems and strategies would be steadfast without a shred of chaos to be seen. I have zero excuses, only one child, part time work so arguably I have all the time in the world. My time is being magically eaten by the same monster who eats one sock from each pair that crosses the threshold. 

I have even less excuse because I have help in Mary who comes in twice a week to break the back of the heavy lifting of the cleaning and we live in a lovely clean home as a result, but the laundry still seems to pile up. 

I did consider just sending it all to the launderette and clearing the decks but the cost was pretty steep and a week later we were back at square one.

The real solution is finding strategies I can stick to and I actually have a laundry room that many laundry connoisseurs would be envious of. I have my washing machine and dryer raised with a drawer underneath each one and the back wall sports shelves and hanging space where the majority of our clothes live. Ricky’s room is right next door so I transfer his clothes but I have no need to drag anything any considerable distance. It’s all right in front of me. It still feels like chaos most of the time. I think it’s the bed linen that truly derails me. They take forever to dry and make every pile seem enormous and as if it’s pulsating in the corner, mocking me every time I see it. I find washing and drying towels so satisfying that we always have a stack of fluffy towels but maybe not a stitch of clothes ready to wear.

The journalist in me responds to deadlines. I will probably always be last minute but a deadline will make me act nonetheless. 

We will be 10 years married on January 1, 2026, and I want to wake up feeling like a domestic goddess. I feel like the clutter of my laundry room probably amounts to eight loads of washing at present so it isn’t a lost cause but as soon as I do one load another appears. There’s a backlog of non urgent garments or things that need to be hand-washed. All three of us are probably wearing the same six outfits on rotation and they get washed regularly. The funniest part of this is absolutely nobody cares except for me.

Nobody will even notice my laundry room because it’s near our bedroom and nobody has any cause to ever walk through it but I’m imposing the deadline on myself just to experience the exhilaration of emptying every vessel and starting fresh for 2026.