Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Strategic Laundry Management (part 1)

You're going to uni and are going to live in a dorm. Or maybe you want to move out of your parents' house to live in your own apartment. Possibly, your significant other, with all her laundry washing prowess has left you...

Regardless of the back story, you are placed in a dire situation. Somehow, the circumstances have forced you to do the laundry by yourself.




Just like any battle, we need... to strategize.


Money is a limited resource and part of this precious resource is going to laundry expenses. To make things worse, the dryer is sometimes paid for separately. More often than not, you have to do multiple loads to wash all your clothes; a proposition that does not please your wallet. It is then imperative that laundry is done efficiently and intelligently.

First off, the amount of clothes to be washed can be determined by this simple formula:
Wash Load = Number of Clothing Articles * Average Volume per Article
Now you say, why volume? Well, clothes need to tumble inside the washing machine. I'd say a bed sheet is as heavy as a few pants but how many bed sheets do you think will fit in the washing machine as compared to pants? Regardless, unless you can contort your body's dimensions or opt for a skimpier wardrobe, volume and density are irrelevant. Anyway, the main point is that we should focus on the other factor: "Number of Clothing Articles", which brings us to the first tip:

1. Reduce usage

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. So instead of thinking about how you can wash all your clothes, why not think about how to reduce the amount of clothes to wash. This solves the problem at its root. You won't have laundry problems if you don't have that much laundry in the first place.

In doing this, we have two crucial objectives we must never lose sight of in our quest to reduce clothing usage:
  • Decent hygiene
  • Nobody noticing

The following are some of the things you could do to reduce clothing use:

      a. Re-use jeans


Jeans have arguably contributed a lot to the advancement of human society by providing a durable, comfortable article of clothing. Heck, it even became a symbol of rebellion.

Hope this rings some very old bells.

One nice thing about jeans is that you don't always need to wash them. For example, in this article, Carl Chiara, director of brand projects and special projects for Levi’s® brand, says:
The less you wash your jeans, the better your jeans become.

Coming from a person who should know his jeans, this is a pretty convincing argument not to wash them.  But of course, do not go overboard with this mantra as we still want to maintain proper hygiene. Do be aware and cautious not to dirty your jeans

Pro Tip: Wear plain, similar denims so that no one will notice you repeating them. People rarely pay attention to your pants.

      b. Use clothes wisely.

 Let's have this scenario:

You go on a date tonight. Nothing fancy. Just you and your significant other. You take a bath, groom yourself and get ready. You have a simple but nice dinner in a small, cozy restaurant... Walk along the quiet evening streets for a while... typical, simple, date in the countryside. At the end of the night, you kiss goodbye and finally get home.

You should have realized something by now. The shirt you are wearing has not been worn for a specifically long period of time. Add to that, it should still be clean (unless you did some dirty... er... stuff). And nobody, except your date, has seen you wearing it. Assuming that there is a low probability that you meet your date tomorrow, why not re-use the shirt?

Pro Tip: Cold weather may be your best friend. People will probably not remember the shirt you're wearing under your sweater.

Again, hygiene is always a concern so exercise discretion whether a shirt can still be worn again without washing. If today was a particularly long, warm day, of course don't repeat the shirt.  However, if say today was a bit chilly and you only wore it to buy something in the supermarket, which is 10 minutes away, you can still probably re-use this shirt.

Pro Tip: Using plain shirts yields the highest success rate for "people did not notice I repeated my shirt" criteria.

      c. Pajamas ( / clothes you wear to sleep) are very reusable.

Assuming you no longer pee in bed, perhaps the best shirts to re-use are the ones you wear to sleep or your pajamas. You don't really stink a lot when you sleep. You don't [physically] go to a lot of places while sleeping, hence lower contamination rate. It's just you, your bed and maybe your pheromones. Unless you're Bella Swan, nobody watches you in your sleep. Considering the statements above, this tip fits quite nicely with the goals we've set.

Pro Tip: Take a warm bath before sleeping. I shit you not, it also helps you sleep better.

This is it for now. I still have a few more to add to this but I'm sleepy now.  -_- zzZZ
Here's a washing machine to entertain you.

P.S. < insert obligatory "pics not mine disclaimer" here>

No comments:

Post a Comment