5 Ways To Simplify Laundry
A blog post about laundry… yep. Obviously you are reading it because you were curious or maybe looking for a way for the laundry to stop ruling your days. I had to figure out a way to contain the laundry crazy back when we were fostering and after living in a camper for 8 months without a washer and dryer, had to kind of reset the laundry routine. So here are 5 ways I have simplified my laundry routine:
(Warning- if you’re my Mom, you may just want to skip this post)
Clean sheet Sunday. I started this when we got married, one day I decided that every Sunday morning I would strip the sheets off our bed to wash them. Honestly it has just been something we stuck with and it is just part of the normal routine. The 8 months of living in the camper and not having my own washer and dryer to do this every Sunday was actually REALLY hard on me.
Everyone has a laundry basket. I got rid of “hampers” years ago. We use a basic, non fancy, cheap laundry basket. Everyone has their own. I don’t transfer laundry from a hamper to a basket or anything crazy. When I go do said person’s laundry, I take their basket to the washer, wash their clothes, put the clean clothes back in it folded, put the clothes away in the same closet. I REALLY hated having to fold multiple people’s laundry from the same load and go put it away in separate places.
This is related to point 2. I don’t sort colors/whites/darks. We honestly don’t wear a lot of white anyways so I haven’t really every ruined anything at this point. But I don’t have the capacity to sort laundry. Each person’s laundry gets done as its own load, all the colors together. (Sorry Mom and Grandma)
Towel Tuesday. This one I recently started in the last few months after seeing someone post about it. Every Tuesday I wash the towels. Simple as that. I wash the bath towels, bath mats, kitchen towels. And yep, much like above, I just throw all the towels in the wash together. Kitchen towels often get washed more often then Tuesdays but I make it a point to grab all the towels on Tuesdays when I wash the bath towels.
Do a load (or 2) a day. For the most part, I do a load everyday of some sort. I don’t have everyone’s laundry tied to a specific day, I just kind of rotate around what laundry would be beneficial to throw in that morning. I aim to throw it in first thing in the morning so by the evening the load can be completely done: washed, dried, folded, and put away.
Bonus tip: Kids ages 3 and up can help fold and put laundry away. When we were fostering, our life was very chaotic and busy. It wasn’t things we could easily just take off our schedule either. It was normal foster care stuff: caseworker visits, bio family visits, therapy, CASA visits etc. I enlisted the help of our kids to fold their own laundry starting at age 4. Sure, I had to let go of my desire for things to be folded perfectly. But it helped contain the laundry chaos. Plus if we aren’t having to sort through multiple peoples laundry in each load, it was so much easier to say here is your basket of clean laundry please work on folding it. Yes they typically need a little help at early ages but they are capable of doing a lot more then we often give them credit for!