If you struggle to keep up with the laundry, you’re not alone. Different people have different approaches to laundry based on their number of family members, the convenience of laundry facilities, and their personal preferences — but feeling overwhelmed by laundry is common to all types of households – even those well-organized. The following suggestions may help make laundry less daunting.
Wear clothes more than once between washes, assuming they still appear clean, and certainly do not smell of anything other than your signature scent. Real Simple and Consumer Reports both offer suggestions on how many times you might wear an item before washing it. In addition to saving time, less frequent washing also saves water, power, and detergent. You want to wash white clothes after each wear because body oils and time-released stains (such as perfumes) can make even a clean-looking white item begin to turn yellow. Dark clothes, however, will fade more quickly with more washing.
Consider washing each person’s clothes separately to avoid the post-laundry sorting problem.
Examine your laundry process to see where you get stalled. If folding is the part that slows you down, minimize the folding. Try to hang instead of fold or place kiddos play clothes in buckets. Many things that don’t get hung will still be fine without any folding. Folding underwear is over-kill and sorting socks is overrated too. If each family member has his or her own type or color of sock, then a bucket makes it super easy. If ironing is the task you despise, buy clothes that don’t require ironing, or hang them in the bathroom and spray with a fine mist of water. The very few that do need ironing get handled at the dry cleaner.
It’s been said before, but it’s worth reiterating: make sure you have plenty of room to store your clothes. If your closets and dressers are overly full, it will always be a challenge to put clothes away. Either eliminate some clothes or add storage pieces.
To the extent you’re able to do so, have tools that work well for you and that you enjoy using. That would include laundry bags, baskets, hampers, or sorters. If you’re going to be folding, try to have a large table at a comfortable height, waist high is recommended.
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