Do you love your laundry routine? Do you have a laundry room? In our new home, we have a laundry closet. There’s no room for laundry to pile up in it at all. You can’t even put laundry on top of the washer and dryer since they are stacked! We added this skinny storage rack on one side for our detergent and have a few collapsable canvas laundry totes on the left side. That’s it.

So where do we put our laundry if we don’t have a laundry room?

We simply do a load of laundry every day (or as often as needed since we don’t have kids at home now) and fold it immediately on our bed, which is right by the laundry closet.

Laundry folding is Lily’s favorite moment of the day, if I’m not quick enough she rushes over to make a nest out of the warm towels. (Do your pets do that, too?) We hang clothes immediately so they don’t wrinkle and put away the folded items so they don’t become a pile.

Is laundry less overwhelming because we don’t have kids at home now? Of course! But the daily laundry habit was one I learned when we had three kids. I used to really struggle with keeping up with laundry. I just couldn’t figure it out! We had piles everywhere! Dirty clothes piles, clean clothes piles in laundry baskets to put away, piles to iron, piles we had to rewash because we left them on the floor and the dog slept in it. So many piles!

When our three kids were young I thought our basement laundry room was a blessing and a curse. It was wonderful for hiding the piles, we just tossed that dirty laundry right on down the laundry chute! Buh-bye! But with plenty of room to hide a mess out of my sight, the pile quickly multiplied into a mountain I didn’t have the energy to face. And I didn’t like going to the basement so I avoided it.

It turns out the size of our laundry space or the location of it wasn’t the main problem to the growing laundry piles.

When I discovered the power of routines and rhythms at home (and life!), everything changed for me. Doing a little bit of laundry every day wasn’t hard like I thought it would be, once I was in the habit of a laundry routine! Our house was tidier, my anxiety was lower and life just felt so much less chaotic once I found daily routines that worked for me as a mom.

Daily routines saved my sanity and transformed our home.

We’ve maintained our routines ever since. Routines are effective whether you have kids or not, a big house or a small house, or a laundry closet or a laundry room! Adapt them so they work for you and your needs, but each of these routines are important.

My dailies for housekeeping are simple (on purpose!):

1. Diligence with dishes.

2. Little bit of laundry love.

3. Bring the bed back to beautiful.

4. Cleaning frenzies.

Once you get in the rhythm of doing your dailies, you’ll find you don’t want to go through the day without doing them! They become a part of your day, almost like breathing or eating! You do them without thinking about it. Routines make everything else function better, so you don’t want to go back to the chaos of life without them!

I call these daily routines “domino habits” because each one sets the right trajectory for the day! And when you don’t do them, the mess and chaos multiplies! Without a commitment to your dailies, the state of your home (and how you feel!) starts to unravel and your mind feels like it’s in a more frazzled state. Your home doesn’t have to be perfect (my goal is “clean enough”) but nobody likes to feel frazzled.

Create a routine that works for your family and season of life.

I’ve shared about the importance and various benefits and tips for having simple daily housekeeping routines in many of my books. If you want to read more of my thoughts on caring for your home and cultivating a healthy mindset towards it, I think you’ll enjoy these books!

• Love the Home You Have (cultivating contentment for what you have)
• Make Room for What You Love (altering your habits and mindsets to create more breathing room and beauty in your home)
• Simple Organizing (simple ways to create more order in your home)
• Dwelling (simple ways to nourish your home, body and soul)
• A Lovely Life (simple seasonal rhythms that make a home and life feel more lovely).

My new book A Lovely Life officially releases on May 17!

PS, if you’re on Instagram, I did a little video chat the other day sharing the heart behind my books, thoughts on the home, and some encouragement for you! I saved it to a highlight on my Instagram profile, you can watch HERE. Send me a message there if you watch, I love connecting with you!

Tell me about YOUR laundry routine in the comments. Do you have a laundry room?