How Much Time Do You Spend Doing Laundry?

Depending on how much clothing you own and how big your household is, you may only have to do laundry every few weeks–even once a month! But if you have children or try to keep a minimal closet, you may find yourself doing laundry much more often. 

Either way, no matter how often you do laundry, it’s not exactly a chore you can cut out of your life unless you’re willing to buy new clothes every time you need something to wear. 

But understanding how much time it actually takes for you to clean and care for all of the clothes in your closet can help you determine the best way to minimize the time you spend doing it, and whether or not it’s worth considering outsourcing some of your labor. 

So let’s figure out how many hours of your life are you dedicating to washing, drying, folding, putting away, hanging up, ironing, steaming, and stain treating each year. 

Prep Time

Laundry doesn’t (or shouldn’t, actually) start by tossing your clothes into the washing machine. Usually, you have to sort through the hamper for like colors and fabrics–separate the whites, separate the delicates, etc. 

If there are multiple people in your home, you’ll have to gather all of the laundry together, carrying in the hampers (or, let’s be honest, piles) from each room. 

Gathering the laundry and sorting it probably takes about ten minutes. If you do laundry once a week that’s about forty minutes a month. 

Washing and Drying

Now, this is a more difficult calculation because not all of it is active time. Stain prep before tossing in the clothes, loading the machine, transferring the clothes from the washer to the dryer… these are all active tasks. But while the machine is running, you can (and likely do) walk away to take care of other things. We’ll say about fifteen minutes per load. 

Assuming you do about four separate loads on laundry day (bedding, delicates, whites, and colors), that’s about an hour of work. So about four hours of work per month. 

Folding, Hanging, and Putting Away

And now for the most universally dreaded part of laundry day. Honestly, we think folding and putting away is the number one reason people avoid doing laundry in the first place. And it’s no wonder! After all that manual labor, now you have to sort and fold and make room–it takes so much more time to do than the actual washing. 

The time for folding and putting away will vary drastically depending on how many people are in your household, what type of clothes you’re washing, and whether you’re a fast folder. Not to mention the ironing if you’re one of those over-achievers! But for once-a-week laundry with a few separate loads, let’s say conservatively two hours of folding and putting away–if that seems excessive, adjust for your own habits. 

But don’t forget to include the amount of time you spend matching socks! That’s another 8 hours a month. 

The Grand Total 

So with an average, conservative estimate, the average household will likely do about 12 hours and 40 minutes of laundry per month. That’s more than a full working day every calendar month! Based on an average salary of $50,000 per year in America that’s about $306.51 worth of labor! 

If it makes sense in your budget, you could utilize full concierge laundry services every month for half that price! Hanger’s Cleaners in Little Rock offers pickup and drop-off laundry services for customers in our area, so you don’t even have to calculate time spent driving to the store. Contact us today for more information.