Which “undies” do you mean? Except for the “pile on the floor crowd”, good bet folks treat their socks, undershirts / bras, and underpants differently.
I have 4 basic categories of socks, plus a few special-purpose oddballs that form a fifth category. Their drawer has dividers to keep the kinds separate and each category is a pile of loose socks that get used in quasi-FIFO order: take from near the front, stuff the freshly washed ones in the rear.
Underpants are similar; several divided categories each of which is a pile used in quasi-FIFO.
Undershirts also come in several categories, but those are roughly folded into quarters and stacked not piled. They come in colors, so the consumption is sorta-FIFO within the color I’m wanting today.
Nope, I don’t fold. I upend the laundry basket full of clean undies directly into my undie drawer. My undie drawer is spacious and reserved for just underwear, so it’s all good.
Socks are paired, folded over once, and tucked into the sock drawer in a neat couple of rows. I seldom wear socks in the summer, so the sock folding chore mostly happens just in the winter and spring.
As long as we are talking laundry, I cannot convince my wife to do my and her clothes separately.
I’m perfectly happy doing my own laundry. And I do. Unless my dear wife gets in the mix, washes it, dries it and lets me separate it and put it away.
Mine is very easy and I know where it goes. Mix hers in with mine and I have 8 drawers of my wifes stuff to look through to find out where it goes. Umm… Are these work out socks? Or daily socks? Oh there is a tee-shirt of mine, and hey! A couple of socks.
I’m afraid I’m going to accidentally hide something form her. Does this get folded or hung? Beats me. Not a clue.
I’ve talked to her about this. But she continues. I don’t want to be an asshole, but from now on, the stuff she mixes in with my stuff is just gonna be dumped on her side of the bed when it is just left in the dryer for me to sort through.
I voted cram. (I didn’t think of socks at all which I roll up in pairs).
It’s just underwear, in my case briefs. I don’t get taking the trouble to do all that rigamarole that some have described above. Frankly I’m lazy, but still, I don’t get going to all that trouble.
When I do the laundry, I’ll fold everything whether it’s mine or hers. Even her undies, which as I’ve noted previously, she doesn’t like how I fold so she usually refolds them. She probably also refolds any of her t-shirts I fold. I stack her stuff on the dresser for her to put away because I dare not put things in the wrong place. She tends to do the same when she does the laundry, although about half the time she’ll put my stuff away rather than leave it for me.
Quick once-over fold so the garment will lie flattish in the drawer and save space. Put the freshly laundered behind what’s already in the drawer. Never let it go past half the stock before doing laundry.
Those two things aren’t mutually exclusive. One of the reasons to own 2 or 3 weeks’ worth of clothes (for each season) is so you can build up a full machine load of dirties, and still have a few days of clean stuff to wear in case you’re slow to wash the dirty stuff.
Same with sheets. One set on the bed, one used set in the hamper, and one clean set on the shelf. At least. Ditto bath towels.
Having already burned out one outrageously expensive LG front-load washer, barely days after the expiration of their special unpublicized extended warranty, I’m highly sensitized to using appliances efficiently. Especially with a new refrigerator arriving in a couple of days to replace one with a failing compressor. Oh, and you’d never guess the brand of the failed refrigerator. Never! I won’t say the brand but it’s two letters that spell “Losing Gamble”. The new one is not that brand, needless to say.
My underwear are all jockey boxers. They get stacked flat in two dresser drawers. The first drawer are the ones I’m working the pile to the bottom. The second drawer are the ones “in storage”. Once the first drawer is empty, I remove the underwear in the second drawer, turn them over, and stack them in the first drawer. Then the process starts again with the second drawer getting restocked as the clean underwear starts to re-accumulate once again.
My dresser has small drawers. If I didn’t fold, I don’t think I could fit everything in. The only cramming is the miscellany in the top center drawer - the scarf and assorted junk drawer.
