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Because I hate cleaning but love living in clean, I’m always looking for ways to make housework work work better for me. Besides cutting my laundry back to just five total loads a week for our family of five (yes, that includes sheets, towels, and all our clothes!), here are a few other ideas I love for speeding the wash along to make laundry easier:
1. Toss the detergent lid in with your wash load.
I always had goopy dried detergent all over from the residue that dripped slowly out of the detergent lid after I’d measured it out. Now I just toss the lid in and the washing machine rinses it out for me. Just be sure you pull it out when you move stuff to the dyer.
2. Don’t fold underwear.
Seriously. Does it matter if your kids’ underwear are folded?Why did I spend so much time folding their underwear???
3. Buy plain white socks.
Matching socks is one of my least favorite domestic activities–so I stopped doing it. Now we all have plain old white socks–different brands so they’re easy to separate. No stripes, no polka-dots, just plain white socks.
I don’t even fold them into balls, because we just have to reach in and grab any two socks from our drawers, and they will match. It’s like magic!
4. Wash socks in a zipped mesh bag.
Okay clearly I have sock issues, but lets be real: socks are some of the worst offenders as far as laundry trauma goes, right?
My older two kids have almost exactly the same size feet, so they just share socks and we don’t sort at all. If sock-sharing won’t fly in your family, I love the idea of washing dirty socks zipped up in a mesh bag. That way you just toss them in the washer and dryer pre-sorted.
5. Keep an extra laundry hamper wherever clothes collect.
Our laundry room is upstairs, but discarded socks, baby jammies, kitchen rags, and outerwear pile up quickly on our first floor (usually on the carpet–boo.). To keep that mess at bay, we’ve now got an extra hamper stashed in our kitchen pantry. I usually just toss that stuff in with a sheet-and-towel load once a week.
What home-keeping hacks do you love?
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#4 is genius. There has GOT to be a name for the fear of shock-by-dried-sock. My husband’s work socks cling to other laundry like leeches. Actually, more like eels, since I pry them off with a ZAP. So basically, you’ve changed my life. 🙂
I also do the lid thing. And amen to what Laura said…I’m totally going to do #4. It never crossed my mind to do something like that. Absolutely brilliant!! Another laundry fave of mine doesn’t save time but saves clothes: Color Catchers. Best laundry invention ever. And if they’re not very dark after being used and you don’t put them in the dryer, you can use them again. I sometimes get 3-4 uses out of one before throwing it out.
Ooh, I have never tried color catchers! Thanks for passing that along!
So funny- I wasn’t sure if anyone else kept a hamper in their pantry but I guess it’s more popular than I thought! I was so excited about it that I wrote about it on my little blog. It’s the BEST kitchen hack. 🙂 Love your blog.
http://www.heyfogg.com/2016/03/09/kitchen-hack/