A while back, a friend asked a group text about how we all handle laundry. The responses were detailed and often elaborate. Some systems might seem a bit byzantine (mine included). Every system worked, but none bore much resemblance to the others.
Complex systems tend to result from evolutionary processes responding to a specific set of needs, resources, and constraints. This is why no matter how “perfect” a system seems to be, no matter how intensely you study it, and no matter how closely you try to hew to it, it’s not going to work for you the way the creator claims it will, at least without some significant alterations to make it fit you (instead of them).
When you are creating the systems that keep the stuff of life at bay, ask yourself some questions:
What are you trying to do?
For this example, the goal is to have clean laundry reliably.
Clarify the desired endpoint.
This might seem redundant to the last point, but given the seemingly perpetual friction re. what constitutes “done” when it comes to laundry (clean, dry, and heaped in a laundry basket vs. folded or hung and put away seem to be the most common camps), it is worth getting clarity on what, exactly, the endgame1 is—and to get buy-in from all parties involved.
What are the resources and constraints?
To continue with the laundry example, the two most common options are using a laundromat/communal laundry room vs. having in-home laundry facilities. The most obvious difference here is that commercial or communal offerings are more likely to give you access to multiple machines (parallel process the laundry!) with a higher time/energy cost of getting to them. In contrast, most folks with in-home laundry have one washer, maybe a dryer, and perhaps a hanging rack or laundry line, but it is trivially easy to access these resources. The physical resources available crucially inform what processes will work.
Another resource that must be considered is time. Laundry is a multi-step process with at least one critical failure point (that would be leaving wet laundry in the machine). Some people reliably have a few minutes a few times a day to wash loads one at a time and laundry facilities close enough to home to facilitate this. Some people find it easier or more effective to schedule a day to focus on beating down the laundry pile, regardless of whether they are at home or using a commercial laundromat.
While some constraints are non-negotiable hard constraints, preferences are another type of constraint, though more malleable. For instance, while I have a dryer, I prefer to line-dry all of my clothing and much of my household laundry. This preference pushes me toward spacing out loads of laundry because air-drying takes longer than a clothes dryer, and space is finite. This isn’t a hard constraint for most of the items I launder (I can use the dryer in a pinch), but it is a strong enough preference that it fundamentally informs my system.
Where does the system fail? How might you solve for or around that failure?
This is where process design gets real. Whatever your plan, no matter how brilliant it seems on paper, it will have failure points. Those failure points will be informed by your resources and constraints.
When I had only my own laundry to wash and access to a communal laundry room with multiple machines, I had no problem throwing everything into a single hamper and separating it on laundry day.
When I got my first in-unit washer, I realized that having a single machine meant that I was dumping out the hamper, sorting everything, and then putting most of it back in the hamper. That was enough nuisance to prevent me from starting laundry, so I got a laundry-sorter hamper.
We later moved to an apartment with a tiny bedroom and the “in-unit” laundry in a garage that we had to leave the apartment to get to. This is when we switched to using a small basket in the living space to collect any laundry and sorters in the laundry room.
A behavioral failure point: I took up oil painting and gardening in wet clay soil, both of which generated clothing left on the floor so as not to contaminate the laundry merely soiled from light use. This was when a second collection basket started: the dirty dirty laundry.
Much of the time, we may not even realize that our systems are systems, but they naturally evolve around any behaviors we repeatedly do. Whenever there is some forever task that feels more onerous than seems reasonable, think explicitly about the systems that have evolved around it and how you might refine those systems to make the stuff of life easier or more manageable.
Another place that seems ripe for conflict here is what constitutes adequate food or meals. Differences in dietary needs and preferences are ubiquitous, from content to quantity to timing. Again, the goal is going to be that everyone gets their needs (and likely some of their wants) met, but the exact implementation is going to vary pretty drastically from person to person and household to household.
My teenager (who has done his own laundry for years at this point) has my dream system. From his room, to wash/dry (in the house) and a basket / "dresser" that is a pivot turn from the dryer. He doesn't wear clothing that needs much in the way of folding so it just all goes it the clean basket by the dryer. Grabs what he wants on the way to the shower and PRESTO.