LAUNDRY HACKS

So I don't know about you but laundry is not one of my favorite chores. Typically I will end up waiting until our baskets are overflowing before I get myself in gear to do laundry. However I have picked up a few hacks along the way that have made the process of doing the laundry or putting it away easier...even if I wait too long to actually do the laundry.

COLLECTING:

A quick tip to think about when collecting your laundry is to make sure that your laundry basket is in the right spot. Where do you find your laundry typically piling up? Does it pile up in the bathroom, your closet or on a chair? Think about where you typically toss your clothes and put a basket there! For us we were always making a pile in front of the basement door with our dirty dish cloths or my daughters clothes etc so what we did was we converted one of the bins in our hall tree into a laundry basket. Now instead of constantly having a pile of dirty laundry by the basement door it is put away in a bin but still super easy to access.

WASHING:

So obviously you need to start with the process of actually cleaning your clothes. I'm going to walk you though the process that I do in order to get our laundry done in an efficient way.

SORT IT OUT

I like to start with sorting out the laundry. In our laundry room we have baskets lined up on the wall one for each type of load we do: whites, colors, towels, Norwex cloths and bedding. By sorting it out in advance we can easily just keep the loads running one after another as it is all sorted and ready to go.

QUICK HANG DRY

To quickly hand dry our clothes I have picked up a hack. What I do is as I'm switching the clothes from the washer to the dryer as I find something that needs hung to dry I lay it across the door of the dryer. Then once I have switched all of the laundry I loop and hanger through each shirt while it is draped over the door then just hang them up to dry.

IRONING:

I absolutely hate to iron. Most of the time I do not have time to iron so several years ago I picked up a hack of using my hair straightener to do quick touch up ironing. This works really well if you have a shirt that needs just a quick once over to smooth out wrinkles. If your shirt is extremely wrinkled a traditional iron is still going to be your best bet.

How I do this is I just lay the shirt flat and then take my straightener and place the shirt between the two clamps then do a quickly run to smooth out the wrinkle. It takes no time at all and most of the time I already have my straightener on in the morning so I just do this as I'm getting ready for the day.

PUT IT AWAY

SORT BY PERSON/TYPE:

When you are starting to fold I find it is so much easier to manage the clothes if I first sort them by person or type of laundry. By doing this I can keep on task and for example fold all of the towels at once instead of hoping from a towel to a pair of pants to my daughters tiny socks. It will also aid you in putting the laundry away as you will have all of the towels folded together in one stack instead of scattered about in different piles.

HANG IT UP:

If you struggle with hanging up clothes then I have a great hack for you that will make it more efficient and cut down your hanging time. When sorting through your laundry start laying out the clothes that you want to hang flat on top of each other facing up. Take your stack of hangers and loop the hanger through the top shirt then fold it down towards you, keep doing this until you have all hangers hung. Now you just need to hang them up!

FILE FOLD:

This is something I have talked about in previous posts but it has been one of the biggest laundry hacks I have come across in keeping out clothes easily accessible. When folding your tops or bottoms to put in a drawer or bin instead of placing them on top of each other try standing them up like you would a file in a file cabinet. It is so much easier to find what you are looking for.

SWEATSHIRT:

This is something that I picked up from working a retail job in high school. First lay your sweatshirt down facing up and cross the sleeves. Next fold the left side towards the middle and then the right side in then fold the bottom up towards the top of the sweatshirt. The next step is to take your hood and fold it back around the body of the sweatshirt. It creates a compact package.

PAJAMAS:

This hack works really well for kids two piece pajama sets. First take your shirt and fold it in half lengthwise, then fold your pants and place them in the shirt and fold the shirt over the pants. This creates a nice package and it is really easy to pull out an outfit when it is folded together.