/hobby/ - Hobby

i was doing the laundry yesterday and wondered: is "how to fold clothes a solved problem?"

at its core, the most efficient fold for any piece of laundry should be able to be identified by optimizing for stability and shape: you want folded clothes to stay folded, and ideally any item would fold to the same or similar shape to allow efficient packing for storage

when folding, i notice that the first step of any item is to get it to a regular shape: typically a rectangle. for a T-shirt, fold the sleeves in and fold the sides together either by halves or thirds, then fold the top to bottom. from here, there's some variation: if the fabric is thin enough, fold it again into thirds, or if it's too thick, fold it in half or leave it as it is

with larger items like sheets and towels the goal is the same, but you are already starting with the regular shape. reduce its longest dimension by half, repeat until you're done

challenges arise when fabric is thicker, or even for tshirts. some optimizations for folding a shirt include offsetting hems when folded by him width to reduce bulk, folding with "flex area" along the folds

it seems like mathematically, we could identify the optimal folding strategy for any one article. has that been done? can we prove that the folding strategy employed by the kondo method is any better/worse than any other strategy?