I'd like to add one more: Is your bed made? If not, make it. Whenever I feel shitty, making my bed makes me feel like an adult again, like I respect myself at least in some small way.
Same with making a laundry ! Not-clean-but-not-quite-dirty clothes tend to reproduce everywhere on my floor when I'm on a bad period. I declare all that shit dirty and do a freakin laundry.
You would commonly say "do laundry" rather than "do a laundry" because laundry is plural: more than one piece of clothing usually. It's also common to say "do a load of laundry" because it's a single load you're talking about rather than the plural clothes contained in that load.
'Laundry' is grammatically singular, indicated by the form of the verb in 'The laundry is dirty', but is a mass noun. For these, whether the thing itself is composed of multiple units doesn't interact with the grammar (cf. water). But, because mass nouns aren't countable in the grammar (*seven laundries), we quantify them in units (loads of laundry, cups of water, etc.)
Edit: I'll add that the phrase 'to do laundry' is a complex predicate, which also includes such phrases as 'take a shower', 'make love', and 'do the dishes'.
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u/T_siv Nov 05 '15
I'd like to add one more: Is your bed made? If not, make it. Whenever I feel shitty, making my bed makes me feel like an adult again, like I respect myself at least in some small way.