I haven’t done my own laundry since 2014. Not because I can’t do my own laundry though.
Me, in 6th Grade.
Growing up my mom actually had me doing my own laundry in the 6th grade. Back then I had a habit of leaving things in the pockets of my pants, especially little gum wrappers. My mom used to do the laundry for the household, and this would drive her crazy. She would find the things in my clothes or in the washer afterward and I’d hear her from across the house, “Briaannnn!”.
Photo from Pexels
Sometimes it would ruin my clothes and we’d have to replace them. One day at the beginning of my 6th grade year she’d had enough, “Brian, if you leave something in your pockets one more time, you're going to be doing your own laundry. This is your final warning!” I think you see where this is going. Within a few weeks, it happened again. She calmly walked up to me and said, “Come with me. **walks me to dryer in basement** You see this? **points to balled up gum wrapper in dryer** that’s the last time!” That day she showed me how to use the washer and dryer, and that was it. I started doing all of my own laundry at the age of 11. Have been ever since.
Decades later, as I started my work with Productivity Gladiator, and created my calculator to determine what my time was worth, I realized outsourcing my laundry might be worth it.
Using a service or a person to do my laundry for me might free up valuable time to do some things that were more important to me?
I noticed it took about one and a half hours to do one load of laundry from sorting it beforehand to folding and putting it away afterward. I found that every ten days or so I would be doing two to three loads of laundry. Doing more loads at once saved some time, but you still have to do one after the other if you’re doing it from home. Overall I found, regardless of whether it was in a washer and dryer in my home, or a laundry room, overall it was about 3 hours of my time for 3 loads of laundry.
Photo from Unsplash
If you experiment with my time value calculator you can see a starting estimate of what your personal time is worth. For me, when thinking about opportunities like this around the house, I value my personal time at $35 per hour. That means in my mind I spend $105 of my time on laundry every 10 days. I started to wonder, “Could I find someone or some service who could do it for less? If I did, could I afford to keep that up and make it a regular part of my life? Would they do a good enough job that I would want to keep working with them?” If I’m being honest, while I’m very good at doing laundry, I don't really love to do it. I don’t enjoy it. It's one of those things that I feel like I “have to do” but I don't really “want to do”.
This has been an adventure and a journey.
In 2014, I started experimenting with outsourcing my laundry. At the time, I was using the home cleaning service called Handy. One of the add-on services was for Handy to do your laundry while they worked. I started to experiment with this. I definitely learned that you had to provide some instruction. Here's a template copy of the instruction sheet that I used to provide the cleaning person which included the instructions they were to follow for the laundry. For about 5 years, I used their services. It worked pretty well. The cleaning people would come and go, and whoever did my cleaning was able to follow the instructions and did a good enough job with the laundry. At some point, I felt the quality of the job they did was no longer up to par for me. I’d find the clothes wrinkled, or some of it left undone. These results weren’t “good enough” to continue the service.
Photo from Unsplash
It was during this time that I started trying other wash-and-fold services. Prior to this, my perception was that the cost of sending the laundry through a separate service was going to be too high. I found this isn’t necessarily true. I remember in college many years ago I used the wash-and-fold service at a local laundromat near campus. They were on the way from one of the jobs I worked, and they offered it for $.50/pound. They always did a good job of folding my clothes, things were never wrinkled, and the quality of the work they did was good. I started wondering if there was something like that around me now-a-days. I used Google Maps and Yelp, checked their websites, called different laundromats that were nearby, and I found a few options that could work. The going rate seemed to be $1 per pound these days. During that research, I also looked into services that included delivery and I came across SudShare. SudShare is also $1 per pound, includes free delivery and pickup, and is a one-day turnaround time. This is very comparable to the service I would get at a laundromat, so I decided to give it a try.
(May 2023 Update: Sudshare has been renamed/rebranded to Poplin.)
So how much? How many pounds is it?
For my household, I’ve found it’s about 20 pounds per adult every 10 days. This includes workout clothes, sheets, and towels every 2 weeks, all of it. Right now, it’s about $40 every 10 days and ends up being about $130-$140 in total per month. I tip the people though that’s not required of course.
Photo from Pexels
Wash/Dry Preferences?
In my experience, cold wash with like colors, low temperature dry is best and easiest. It has resulted in excellent longevity for my clothes, even through the hundreds of people that have washed them.
How is the current service?
It’s been six months with SudShare now, and the results have been wonderful! I have been impressed with the quality of the service and especially the folding. I equate Sudshare to the Uber of wash-and-fold service. There are a whole bunch of people out there willing to do laundry which they call “Sudsters”. When you request a service they post the opportunity to see which Sudster wants it. They come and pick it up, wash-and-fold it, and drop it back off the next day. The quality of the folding has been just as good as I remember from the wash-and-fold services I used before, nothing comes back wrinkled. It's comforting to me to use this “Uber-like” model as well. With many different people being available to come and do laundry, this means if someone is on vacation, or too busy, or stops working for SudShare, there are others who will be able to fill in, and I don’t have to coordinate any of that.
Since I've started I've had about ten different Sudsters do my laundry. Of those, only one of them did not complete my laundry in the guaranteed time frame of one day and took 2 days, causing me to not request that Sudster again. The rest of the Sudsters I’ve used have been great and I would use them again. The app allows for this too, you can always keep requesting your favorite Sudsters, and if they’re not available another one can take care of it.
Ultimately, I'm writing this post for two reasons:
I wanted to share the thought that if you're feeling overwhelmed or looking for opportunities to get some of your time back, you could look into wash and fold service for your laundry. You could give a gift card to a parent or friend who is feeling this way too. Do you feel like you don’t get quality time with your partner or family? Do you ever go out to eat on weekends? Perhaps you can try using that money on this service one weekend on a Sunday afternoon, and instead of doing laundry, go on a $0 date instead. You can make some sandwiches and go picnic in the park, go see friends, play games, or do something together. Using a service doesn’t necessarily mean spending more money each month, just changing how you spend it in relation to your time.
Right now I’m happy with the quality of the work I'm getting with SudShare, but I'm also comfortable with the fact that just like many services there might come a day where I might be looking for a new one. I’ve used many over the years. For the 3 hours of my time that I get back every 10 days or so, it is absolutely worth it for me to continue to look for these kinds of solutions. That time allows me to do more of the things that are important to me, and feel more balanced in my life. I do have a limit on how much I would pay for this type of service. This is not something I would always choose to use if it didn’t make sense, but right now, with the price and experience I’m getting, I'm extremely happy with this decision and the solution that I have. If you’ve never considered this, I hope you’ll look into it!
Other hot tips from others I’ve heard since writing this:
Never, ever, take anything wet for wash-and-fold service! -Kim C-
Note: I looked into this, good tip to pay attention too! SudShare weighs your laundry after it’s all been dried and folded, each service is different!
2 Bits of Helpful Info About SudShare Specifically:
To check if SudShare services your area, you can type in your zipcode here.
$10 Credit - I have no affiliation or relationship to SudShare, and ultimately write this to inform you. However, they have a referral program, so if you would like to give them a try you can use this link and earn a $10 credit towards your first laundry service.
https://referral.sudshare.com/px1d
I’m Brian. At age 4, I was diagnosed with insulin dependent (type 1) diabetes and told that my life was going to be 10-20 years shorter than everyone else. Time is precious. I created Productivity Gladiator because I saw what a difference it made to share small and specific actions you can take right now, right away, to achieve better work life balance, be more productive, and live your best life right now, today, not wait until retirement. I want you to start doing the things you WANT to do, not get stuck only chasing what you NEED to do. If any of this resonates with you, I hope you’ll subscribe, and if you’re so inclined, send me a note. It brings me joy sharing Productivity Gladiator with you.