List My Laundry Tips



Via

Tomorrow is the last day of the One Room Challenge. I am so excited to reveal my finished laundry room. Today, I was up in the wee hours of the morning putting on the finishing touches to the room.


Since I have laundry now on the brain, I thought I would list a few tips I have picked up along the way to get through the chore. (To put it mildly, it is not my favorite activity, but it must be done!)

1. Wash Often
I use to always wait until late Sunday night to do all the laundry for the week. I would end up tired and frustrated, and the laundry would for the most part only get half done as a result. Now, I make it a point to do a few smaller loads every few days. It prevents a big back log of laundry, and improves the chances I will actually fold everything right after it comes out the dryer.

2. Don't Sort Everything
Now that I washed clothes more frequently, I needed to increase the size of the load of laundry to justify the water use. Pretty much now I do one pile of delicates and one pile of everything else. No longer are towels washed on their own. I even will combine color clothes with whites as long as I know the color will not bleed.
 
3. Some Things Aren't Really Dirty
I know some people won't agree with this, but there are a few times that I won't wash something after we wear it. For example, if I only wore a dress to church for a couple of hours, it goes back on the hanger. Also, I try to get a few wears out of our jeans before they go into the washing machine.
(This excludes the many times my boys become covered in mud.)

4. Fold the Laundry Where It Can't Be Avoided
I use to have a bad habit of managing to fold the laundry, but since it was very late on a Sunday by then (See #1), I would stack everything back into the laundry basket instead of putting it into the various drawers around the house, where they belonged. It would then take me a few days to get around to putting things away, and in the mean time everything would get unfolded when we would dig through the basket to find a clothing item. Now I fold the laundry on my bed. I have to put things away or I can't get under my sheets. Since I like to sleep, I put the folded laundry away.
 
5. Focus On the Goal
This tip gets me though a lot of things in life. But when it come to laundry, I just keep thinking you have to do it, so there is no reason to fight it. Plus, one of my favorite little-things-in-life is to slip into a bed with freshly cleaned sheets. So happy!

These small changes have made a big improvement to our laundry routine. Do you have any laundry tips to share?

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