How to stay on top of your laundry
Laundry is something that will never go away. It will always be there waiting to get done. Not doing your laundry can result in huge piles and few entire days just doing laundry. Keeping on top of your laundry can be a hard task, but here are some tips on how to make sure you don't spend days playing catch up.
Have a laundry organizer in your laundry room. You don't have to buy fancy holders, just use something simple that will be perfect for you. Have a box for darks, whites, towels, delicates, things you have to wash by hand, baby clothes, and any other types you sort your laundry into. If you don't have a laundry room, try to still keep laundry baskets of each type. If you have a baby that has to have a certain type of laundry detergent, then use a laundry basket just for them. Put a couple laundry baskets in the
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When your laundry basket gets full, sort the laundry into the boxes in your laundry room. When each box is full put a load of laundry through. Try to have the boxes be big enough to hold about one and a half loads of laundry so that you can hold more than one load if necessary. It is a waste of energy to put through only have a load and it wastes your time so using a sorting system is more time efficient and will save you money too.
Make sure you have a box for items that require special attention, like hand washing or need to have a stain worked out of them. This way, you can get all the stains out at once and get all the hand washing done at the same time. It will also save you time.
The things about stains is that you have to make sure you get to them as soon as possible, so don't let the stained shirt stay in the pile for long because it will be harder to get out or won't come out at all. If you have a bunch of stained clothes, put them in a load together and use a stain treater that goes right in the washer. This way you won't have to spend two hours just getting out stains.
If you have older children, have them help with laundry. It might seem like there's no point in making you kids help, but it is a valuable lesson. Eventually they will move out and will have to do their own laundry. It will be a lot easier on them if they already know how to do their own laundry. You might want to make them do their own laundry or just help you as part of their chores. Either way, they need to know how to do their own laundry before they move out, and it will help you keep on top of your laundry.
As soon as a load comes out of the dryer, fold it then. It will be so much easier than spending an hour just catching up on folding towels or clothes. Plus you won't have huge piles of clean laundry but nice folded piles that can be put away super fast. If you don't have time to put them away or want to wait until the other few loads are done then just put the folded clothes in piles on your bed. That way you have to put them away at least before you go to bed.
Staying on top of your laundry can be really hard so try some of these ideas. It doesn't take much for laundry to creep up on you so have a system that works for you and stick to it.
