Dear FlyLady,

There are three of us in the family, so doing a load of laundry a day isn’t necessary. Here’s how I’ve modified your load-a-day habit to fit our laundry needs and help keep us in clean clothes that are put away.

I used to wait until I saw that we were running out of clean socks and undies to go down to the basement and sort and wash the laundry. That wasn’t really a very good way to do things as it meant doing 4 or 5 loads in a couple of days.

Then I’d get overwhelmed with all the clean clothes that had to be put away, so they would end up sitting in the baskets getting more and more wrinkled. In my mind we had clean clothes and that’s what mattered

– even if we were having to dig through the baskets to get our clothes each

day. I hated it, but I couldn’t see a way around it. As I said, doing a load of wash a day isn’t practical for us, but sorting the laundry every day is!

Now I take a few minutes each morning to go downstairs and sort out the dirty clothes and towels. If one of my sorters has enough dirty clothes or towels in it to do a wash, then in it goes. Some days I do need to wash two loads, but that’s far more manageable than four or five. This way there is no Mount Washmore. As for folding and putting the clothes away, I do it one basket at a time. That way I don’t get overwhelmed and the clothes don’t sit around for days, just a few hours. I also don’t feel like a failure, nor do I feel the enormous pressure of having all that laundry piled in the bedroom waiting to be put away.

While I’m at it I’d also like to thank you for having Swish & Swipe as last month’s habit. I had the swipe down, but the swish never got to be a habit – until now. The toilet and I are no longer at odds with each other. I can hardly believe that it’s been clean for a whole month! Thank you so much!

FlyBaby Linda in Wisconsin

Nests are Being Built

Hello to all my friends at FlyLady!

I purchased your dryer vent brush set, and have been very happy with it. The first time I used it, like many other folks, I was shocked at the amount of lint in the vent tubing. I now clean it out every 3 or 4 months, and get some, but not a dangerous amount! After I’ve cleaned it out I notice a difference in my dryers performance.

Well, last week we noticed that the dryer wasn’t working quite right, and started to figure that after 26 years it was getting ready to bite the dust. I had cleaned the vent tubing just recently, as well as the filter area, so knew the problem wasn’t that. When I told my husband this evening that it took 2 hours to dry one load of lightweight clothing he decided to double check the part of the vent that is outside of the house.

Much to our surprise we found that a squirrel or bird had decided to use that nice warm vent as a nest. There was a ball of leaves, grass and other “stuff” about the size of a cantaloupe stuffed into the vent outlet!! Now, my dryer is working great again!!

So, the moral of my story, I guess is don’t forget the outside part of your vent too!

Thank you for all that y’all do!!!

Flybaby in Delaware