In my house, laundry day in Monday. The first load goes in as soon as I get up – that’s the sheets – they wash while I have breakfast. Then I collect all the laundry hampers and towels through out the house and sort them into loads. The washer and dryer don’t stop until all the laundry is done. In between loads, I get caught up on office work and house cleaning, and fold the clean laundry fresh out of the dryer. There are two people in my house, so this routine works well for me.
I know there are many ways of working out a laundry routine, but I also know this is an area people tend to struggle with. The piles of laundry never seem to end. How can we make this a task that isn’t constantly nagging at us?
Tips for doing laundry:
- If you have the space, put two laundry baskets or hampers in the bottom of your closet. When you take off your dirty clothes sort them into these hampers (lights/whites and dark/colors). This will help save the step of sorting them on wash day.
- Why do you sort laundry? To prevent the darker clothing from discoloring the lighter clothing.
- I keep a separate hamper for clothes that require special care such as wash on delicate cycle or hang to dry.
- Read and follow the clothing labels for washing instructions. Click here for a list of what all those symbols mean.
- Turn your shirts and pants inside out before you put them in the laundry hamper. This will help your clothes last longer and prevent the color from fading as quickly.
- Make sure your socks are outside out and not in a ball when you put them in the hamper.
- Reduce the amount of laundry you produce:
- Reuse your bath towel for 3-4 days – have a designated day to switch the bath linens.
- Wear your jeans 2-3 times unless visibly soiled.
- If your clothes are still clean when you take them off, save them to wear again.
- When your children are old enough (as young as 10 years old!), teach them how to do their own laundry and assign them their own laundry day each week. Be sure to follow-up with them so you know it got done. (You can start them young with small laundry tasks such as sorting, folding, putting away, etc. and then progress to using the machines and doing it all independently.)
- Assign a laundry day for bed sheets so everyone knows to strip their bed when they get up.
- Always complete the task. If your routine is to do a load of laundry a day, be sure to complete the load – wash, dry, fold, put away – so you don’t have it lingering into the next day.
- Fold your clothes right out of the dryer, as soon as the dryer stops, to prevent wrinkles.
- Match your socks and roll them together.
- I place my folded clothes into the laundry hamper for taking back to my bedroom to sort and put away.
- A shelf beside the dryer could be useful. Assign a shelf for each family member, and as you fold the clothes out of the dryer, put them on the appropriate shelf. Each family member can then come and put their own clothes away.
- Set clothes that need ironing aside in a neat pile to prevent further wrinkles before ironing.
- If you are putting bleach in with a load of whites, do this load last to give your washer a little cleaning at the same time.
Be sure to check out these related post:
Folding Flat and Fitted Sheets
These are very helpful practical tips.
Our household has 8 people, so I do laundry every day, usually 3 loads. I also put a load in the washer right away when we get up. I wake up the boys and have one of them bring their sets of sheets, and put them on to wash, (we do this on rotation, so everyone gets their sheets cleaned once a week.) Then while they are eating breakfast, I fold the load I had drying during the night, and put it away right away. I also run another load when we get home from school/work, and another at bedtime. We keep all the children’s clothes on shelves in the laundry room. They also get dressed/changed in there, so they generally don’t have dirty clothes in other parts of the house. When the are done bathing in the evenings, they bring their dirty clothes right away to the laundry room too. I fold it as soon as it comes out of the washer and because the clothes are stored in the laundry room too, they are easy to put away immediately as well. I do put my husbands and my clothes in our room, but that’s really easy too, since I just take the clean ones or dirty ones back and forth as I am doing other things as well. We don’t have a lot of hand washing, but I always take care of it as I come upon them in the hamper. Otherwise I would forget. Any ironing that need to be done, I hang on a hook and save it for Saturday, when I do them all at once.