How many of you have issues with laundry? I hear this all the time. Clients say, “Laundry is my nemesis!” I’ve been a professional organizer for 14 years and have been in many people’s homes and seen a lot of laundry issues. Today, I’m sharing my top five tips to make doing laundry easier for you.
The first thing you need to ask is, “What is my problem with laundry?”
Do I have too much to wash?
- Do I have too many clothes?
- Am I, or my family, using too many clothes in a week?
- Could we reduce what we use?
+ Wear something twice – especially your outerwear (i.e. wear a sweatshirt, vest, or sweater twice… or three times before washing it).
+ Use the same towel for 3 days in a row. It’s not unusual to use one or two towels a week.
+ Keep the sheets on for a week or longer.
+ Wear the same pajamas a couple nights in a row.
+ Don’t let your kids change outfits during the day.
+ Keep your clothes off the floor (so you don’t have to wash them again!).
There is a solution to this problem… create less laundry.
Is it a belief issue?
Do you believe that you cannot keep up with your laundry? Is this a mindset issue? Do you think any of these thoughts?
- Laundry is hard.
- Laundry is my nemesis.
- I hate laundry.
- Laundry has always been a problem.
Identifying these thoughts is a good place to start.
And… guess what? There is a solution to your belief problem. 💥
Realize it’s optional to believe your current thought.
What if you believed…
- Laundry is my nemesis right now, but I’m going to get better at it.
- I can overcome this.
- I am learning how to master my laundry.
What new thought can you replace your negative thought with? I love helping people come up with new beliefs.
Do you not have systems in place?
By a system, I just mean some sort of plan, some sort of routine or way that you have in place to get things done.
Maybe that’s it… you don’t have a plan laid out to get things done.
- Write on your calendar that you will do laundry on Saturday mornings at 8:30 AM.
- Incorporate one of the five tips below.
- Teach your children to do their own laundry. Assign them a day that they get to wash, fold, and put away their clothes. Kids as early as eight to ten years old can learn how to do this chore. My husband says as soon as your kid can talk back to you, they can learn to do their own laundry. 😆 Ha!
5 tips to make doing laundry EASIER for yourself.
1. Use a timer
Always have a timer set when you put in the laundry. You know what’s going to happen if you don’t, right? We forget it’s up there (my laundry is upstairs) and then 12 hours later, we have to run the load again because we’ve forgotten. Use a timer.
The easiest thing to do is to set your phone timer because you usually have your phone with you. If you have a Google or Alexa in your house, tell her to set the alarm and tell you when it’s done. That sounds kind of fun.. Alexa will tell you what to do and then you just go do it. Too bad we can’t tell her to go do the laundry!
2. Hang as much as you can
Hang as much laundry up onto hangers as you can. A good friend of mine thinks this was the best tip for her when she had younger kids. She used to fold all their t-shirts and put them in drawers. Have you ever seen a kid’s drawer just smashed full of wrinkly clothes? Hanging them will eliminate that.
Hang as many things as you can – as much closet space as you have. Especially with kids – hang all of their t-shirts and hang girls’ blouses and dresses. As for pants – that just depends on your space. If you have shelving or if you have drawer space, maybe pants and shorts are kept in a drawer, but use as many hangers as you can fit in the closet.
Hanging things keeps them wrinkle-free. It’s easier to do because you take it out and you hang it immediately. We have a rod in our laundry room which I think is the most valuable thing. If you’re thinking of building a house or putting a laundry room in, I highly recommend a rod space, because I love to just hang things right out of the dryer.
HERE are my favorite hangers of all time!
3. Fold everything right at the dryer
Stand at the dryer and fold everything right out of the dryer. If you put them in a basket or pile them on the couch or pile them on your bed… what do you think is going to happen? They are going to get left in the basket, get shoved to the end of the bed, and then they’ll be on the floor.
Maybe you can relate to that? Stand at the dryer to fold and hang them immediately. Nothing will be wrinkled because you had your timer set and you went right then to fold them.
4. Put it away immediately
After folding your laundry, walk immediately to put it away. Again, you know what’s going to happen… you’ll set it down and it’ll stay there until you get out of the shower and you don’t have any underwear in your drawer because you didn’t put the laundry away. Or you’ll be digging through a pile on the floor wondering if they are clean or dirty.
Now, if you have kids and you’re training them to put their clean clothes away, but they’re at school or sports, then that can pose a problem. You can then put the stack of clean clothes right outside their door, on their dresser, or on their bed. Then, it’s up to you to check before they go to bed that they’ve actually put them away. If you don’t check, you’ll be the one that reaps the consequences of having to wash them again (without them having been worn) because the pile will morph into a mess and maybe get mixed up with dirty clothes.
When you fold and immediately put it away, then the load is done. You did it! You completed the laundry and it feels great.
5. Simplify
What areas of the laundry process can we simplify? Here are a few ideas to simplify.
Could you use fewer laundry products?
Maybe it’s easier to just do two things (a pod and one spot remover spray) instead of so many different products. Is there something that you could cut out from your process?
Could you simplify by doing fewer loads?
As I mentioned above, you’re going to not wash this item until it’s worn three times. You’re going to get one towel and you hang it back up on the rod assigned to you. That would cut down on so many loads if you used one towel or two towels for a week. When you put things away immediately, you have less mess to rummage through.
Could you purge one-third of everything in your closet and drawers?
Maybe ‘to simplify’ for you would mean going into your closet (or your family’s closets) and drawers to purge out all of the unneeded items. Sometimes the problem with putting things away, is there’s no room because it’s too crowded. Go through things and take out what you haven’t used in the last year. This way, you’ll have fewer clothes and less laundry.
Now, if you’re still backlogged and the amount of laundry has gotten out of hand, I have a one-time solution for you.
Take all of the clothes that need to be washed – all your laundry – and go to the laundromat.
You could pay to send it out, but if you don’t have the money for that, go to the laundromat and wash all of the dirty clothes in the house. You might take 10 washing machines, but it would all be done in an afternoon.
What do you think of these top five tips to make doing laundry easier? Here is another article that can help – 8 Simple Laundry Solutions That Work.
What other laundry questions do you have? Post those below and I will try to answer those.
I love laundry.
A lot of it comes back to what you BELIEVE. What is your thought about laundry?
- Do you love it?
- Is it easy?
- Is it a priority?
Are you learning the skills to become a ninja laundry person? 😁
Maybe that’s where you are right now. You are determined to learn these skills and become a professional. You’re going to practice these skills until you’re good at them. Until you believe, “I’m just good at laundry.”
Just like playing the piano, you need to practice to get better. It takes practice to become good at something, even laundry.
What if it is possible for you to have laundry be easy in your house? Make your brain start looking for the solutions to that – for the evidence that you’re creating an easy laundry routine.
Have a great day.
