Any other writers out there who get so caught up in a project that you completely forget about laundry? I swear, I've left clothes in the washer for days because I was deep in writing mode. How do you balance writing and keeping up with daily chores? Let's hear your best tricks!

Simple, Mary.  Do as little housework as possible.  The fewer jobs you start, the fewer will be half-done when the muse strikes.  According to Quentin Crisp, dust doesn't get any thicker after the first four years, so that's reassuring.

Mary's advertising a laundry service, but the link is dead.

But, if anyone really wants to know my solution is similar to Jo's.

It only takes a few minutes to load and start the machine, then you can forget about until the next natural break in your writing.  If the washing machine stopped several hours before that the world won't come to a grinding halt, or implode, and no little demons  will run up and down the street with megaphones telling everyone you're a lazy sod.  But would it really matter if they did?  You can tell yourself 'they've obviously got nothing better to do with their time', whereas you have.

When you stop for a drink either set the laundry to spin, or transfer it to the tumble drier and set it going.

Seriously, if you can't maintain the thread of what you're writing for those two or three minutes, maybe you're not really a writer.

Almost every domestic chore can be broken down into bits, and a wind-up timer can remind you when cooking or bread=making needs your attention.

Sometimes of course you'll be so far away in your writer's world you won't even hear it, and bread which needed turning will be dark on one end and pale on the other.  But these are the times you won't even hear the doorbell, and will wonder what the hell's going on when your Grandaughter taps on the office window and starts pulling faces though the glass.

I have no advice about finding time for ironing.  Haven't done any since I moved in here six years ago, and very little in the years before that.

Gyppo

I don't iron either, Gyppo.  No, that's not quite true - I own a (small) iron and a table-top ironing-board, and I use them about three times a year, when there really is no alternative.  I make a point of buying clothes that won't need ironing, or at least won't look too dreadful creased.