The Out-Of-Time Laundry Approach

We're crazy-busy right now with our robotics team going to the State Championships this weekend in Hillsboro. I'm probably the crazy-busiest of all, given that I'm
A) The Mom
and
B) The Coach.

Poor Wayne just had hernia surgery, so he's not really able to be helpful in any meaningful sense, except for offering suggestions about things that I could be doing. And...um...that's not really helpful. So everything falls on me right now - dishes, food, sweeping, laundry, yadda yadda yadda. The nice thing about having kids this age is that they can pitch in a lot and really help out. There's nothing like being able to say "Could you please go clean the bathroom" and actually having it look clean afterwards (even the toilet!)

Laundry is perhaps the biggest time-killer, especially if you're trying to hang it all out to dry, especially in this damp and cold season when it can take a couple of days to do so. These are the times I'm especially tempted to just fall back on technology and fossil fuels and throw it all in the dryer for an hour or two of spinning heat. But I hit upon a solution that's a good compromise between this and laundry martyrdom. I run a load of laundry, then I take the heaviest slowest-to-dry items and put them in the dryer, but I don't run it yet. I get another load started in the washer and hang the quickest-to-dry items (like my polypro running gear) in the bathroom over the heater vent. The rest goes on the drying racks in the garage. I repeat this with load two and perhaps even a load three. By the time the last load is done, I have a full dryer and I run it with the heavy stuff. So I do use the dryer, but for one load out of three. My laundry work-time is cut at least by 30%, and that lands it in the "manageable" category. That's my out-of-time tip for the day.