I Have a Problem

I'll be the first to admit I'm no housekeeper. I never seem to have the time, energy, or attention span to sustain any sort of cleaning regimen. It gets done when it gets done. My goal the last couple of years has been to at least keep things sanitary, clean, and smelling...not gross, if not nice. It may be cluttered, but at least you're not going to catch some sort of bizarre disease if you come into our home. I know that's not a very high standard (you neat freaks can feel good about yourselves as you read this :-p), but that's just how it is at the moment.

Actually, at this very moment, our aparment is not only not disgusting, but is relatively organized and clean, as it should be, because I've spent the last three mornings working on picking this up and organzing them (I still have a couple of sinkloads worth of dishes to do--for realz--but that takes forever, because our hot water runs out so quickly). One of the big projects I had on the list was laundry.

Of all the chores I have around the apartment, laundry is the least painful. I can start up the washing machine or dryer, let it go for an hour, then come back and fold the laundry while watching T.V. or listening to the radio. It's relaxing and I don't have to dedicate an extended period of unbroken time to it (unlike washing all our dishes, which I have to do by hand). However, since we live in an apartment building that has a shared laundry facility, we don't just pop our clothes in the washer or dryer and let it go. You have to have quarters. $2.75 worth of quarters to be exact.

For whatever reason, we've always been bad about remembering to get quarters. While DOH sort of collects change (he doesn't ever really use it for some reason), he never seems to remember to bring in quarters for me and I never seem to remember to ask. Like a lot of my housekeeping duties, laundry gets shoved to the bottom of the list. This has resulted in a literal mountain of laundry. I'd show you a picture, but honestly, it's a little embarrassing. Admittedly, some of the clothes in our launry "pile" have been sitting there since we lived in our old apartment (which we moved out of in July 2009).

So, my goal for this weekend, in addition to to just getting some of our clothes washed so I had something to wear at home besides pajama bottoms, was to organize what we had and decide what could be packed up and sent to the new house. Now, don't think I'm starting that horrible cycle of leaving clothes to sit and never be washed after a move. Because I can finally (FINALLY) wash clothing without having to have an absurd number of quarters on hand, my intention is to get ALL of that laundry done and to have it organized even further (donate, keep, chuck or upcycle). So, once everything was said and done yesterday, this is what I had:
Okay, there was supposed to be a nice little example picture here, BUT for some reason I'm unable to upload it :-/ Maybe later.

The picture would show you a sizable amount of laundry still yet to be washed, BUT it was all neatly organzied into baskets, just waiting to be hauled off to the laundry room. And then I had a shot of my bed, where I had piled five (six?) trashbags FILLED with laundry that's heading to the new house this coming weekend. All this laundry will be done at the new house (maybe in a new washer and dryer?). Where are we going to put six bags of dirty laundry for a week in our insanely tiny apartment? Oh, they're still hanging out in our bedroom, piled up by myside of the bed. That's fun.

So, with all this wonderful access to my own laundry facility and even a line to hang laundry so it can dry outside in addition to using the dryer (I love the smell of laundry dried outside), my assumption is that more laundry will get done. Clearly, if that's not the case, then I really do have a problem.