doing laundry

Doing laundry is the process of washing, drying, and often folding clothes and household linens.

The phrase treats the entire chore as a unit: I spent Sunday doing laundry.

Though laundry technically means the items themselves, doing laundry emphasizes the task rather than the objects—nobody says "doing dishes" to mean the same thing as "washing dishes," but doing laundry and washing laundry are interchangeable.