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A review by thisisgettingstupid999
Laundry Love: Finding Joy in a Common Chore by Patric Richardson, Karin B. Miller
3.0
After unexpectedly enjoying Fridge Love, last year, I wondered if I could feel some affection for other household chores.
Laundry Love gets off to a bad start when American Textiles expert, Richardson, tells us he will ‘slash’ our laundry time to four hours and ten minutes per week! Do people really spend that much time on it? “What are you going to do with all that extra time?” he asks. Well, if you’re including the time the washing actually spends going through a cycle, I don’t have to actually stand and watch it spin: I can write a novel, open a business or nap (his ideas) while the machine does its job.
Next comes a list of 16 essential items (and a further 7 optional ) some of which (and maybe this is because I’m in the UK) sounded very unfamiliar.
There’s a lot of padding with personal memoirs , which I skimmed over, tbh. (‘Grannies’ featured heavily.)
The book picked up, however, when Richardson confirmed the things I already believe: dry cleaning is unecessary and undesirable, and most laundry can be machine-washed using just one cycle programme. I also like that he advocates reducing the amount of times we wash a garment – better for the planet and better for our clothes.
His chapter on Laundry Rooms slightly amused me as, while acknowledging that some are better than others, he didn’t seem to entertain the idea that the washer might be kept in the kitchen, which I think is the most common set-up in Britain. ( Laundry or ‘utility’ rooms are aspirational though!)
Overall, there’s a lot of useful information in this book, but some of the fluffier bits should have been caught in the lint filter.
Laundry Love gets off to a bad start when American Textiles expert, Richardson, tells us he will ‘slash’ our laundry time to four hours and ten minutes per week! Do people really spend that much time on it? “What are you going to do with all that extra time?” he asks. Well, if you’re including the time the washing actually spends going through a cycle, I don’t have to actually stand and watch it spin: I can write a novel, open a business or nap (his ideas) while the machine does its job.
Next comes a list of 16 essential items (and a further 7 optional ) some of which (and maybe this is because I’m in the UK) sounded very unfamiliar.
There’s a lot of padding with personal memoirs , which I skimmed over, tbh. (‘Grannies’ featured heavily.)
The book picked up, however, when Richardson confirmed the things I already believe: dry cleaning is unecessary and undesirable, and most laundry can be machine-washed using just one cycle programme. I also like that he advocates reducing the amount of times we wash a garment – better for the planet and better for our clothes.
His chapter on Laundry Rooms slightly amused me as, while acknowledging that some are better than others, he didn’t seem to entertain the idea that the washer might be kept in the kitchen, which I think is the most common set-up in Britain. ( Laundry or ‘utility’ rooms are aspirational though!)
Overall, there’s a lot of useful information in this book, but some of the fluffier bits should have been caught in the lint filter.