College life skill Help

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How do you do laundry?

Seriously, though. I understand the mechanics.

1. Wear your clothes.
2. Put them in the hamper.
3. Take them to the washer.
4. Clean and dry them.

But I always either end up with far too much clothes for the washing machine and no clothes in my closet, clean clothes in my hamper, or nothing at all in the hamper and a closet full of dirty clothes.

I've figured out how long to wear certain articles of clothing before I consider them to be dirty, but I still seem to struggle.

I'm going to college soon and want to figure this out, but google searching hasn't gone well in terms of help between steps 1 and 2.

Does anyone have a process worked out that leaves helps them stay on top of laundry?
It's just been so difficult for me!

Don't worry, you're not alone. I'm in graduate school and I still often end up running out of clean clothes because I'm not staying on top of laundry. I have never been bullied or alienated because of this in college and graduate school (though probably because I'm in an elite school); I have a NT friend from undergrad years who has a similar issue since she's too busy studying and keeping a part time job at the same time and that didn't really affect her social life.

My strategy is: if I begin to smell and my head itches, I must take a shower and change clothes. If I run out of clean clothes and don't have time for laundry, I can wait for 1 or 2 days until I have enough time. OK, actually I often do have time but just end up losing track of time due to special interests (and recently Wrong Planet is trying to become a new special interest though I'm trying to resist it), there is a point when I'm so grossed out that I have to do laundry no matter what. Since I don't think it's necessary to shower every day (nor do dermatologists; they recommend showering 2 or 3 times a week if you're not that physically active since showering every day may disrupt your skin microbiome and cause dry skin), I actually do laundry about once a month and it's not too much work at this rate. A trick to fool others into believing you having good personal hygiene is to change jackets even though you haven't changed your clothes inside; I did it and it works. Actually if you work in a lab (you likely will beginning in your junior year in college if you're a biology or chemistry major), people in your lab won't even notice that you haven't changed clothes since you have to wear a lab coat anyway. If you have too many clothes for the washing machine, then just use 2 washing machines at the same time; nobody will judge you for that since it's not unusual to use 2 washing machines even if there aren't too much clothes for one machine; people do it to wash light colored and dark colored clothes separately so the light colored clothes won't be stained.