Simplifying Laundry

Laundry.

It’s the never ending, ever present task.

And with a growing family, our laundry is growing too!

But I finally found a few steps that helped me tackle the mountain and I learned to stop dreading the laundry.

First of all, for me, I like to have a laundry day and just do all the laundry at once. Sometimes that isn’t possible, and some people don’t like to that. These other steps will work whether you like to accomplish all the laundry at once or whether you are doing smaller amounts throughout the week. Some weeks when I can’t do it all at once I do mine and my husband’s laundry on one day and the kids’ another day.

So I gather up the laundry and just get it going.

Step one is put a load of laundry in the washer and SET A TIMER! That way there is no wasted time once it’s finished.

When that load is done it gets moved to the dryer and a new load goes in the washer and I SET A TIMER. Obviously this cycle keeps going until all the clothes are done. But the timer is key to getting everything moved through the machines quickly and efficiently.

When a load is done in the dryer these are the steps I follow.

Our laundry: For mine and Harrison’s clothes I pull everything out and I separate any clothes that I really don’t want to get wrinkled. I especially make sure to pull out my husband’s dress shirts - they are non-iron, so as long as I hang them up from the dryer they are good to go. The rest of the clothes I take and sort (usually on our bed) into piles: tshirts, pajamas, underwear, socks, casual shorts and shirts. Since I usually have more than one load I leave them sorted like this until all our loads are done.

Once all the clothes are dry and sorted into these piles it’s time to put them away. Here’s the thing that saves me a lot of time. (And really, I’m afraid I might lose some of you here)

I don’t fold all the clothes.

Yep. That’s right. Pajamas? Nobody cares if they are a little wrinkled. Underwear? Why fold that?

So I grab each pile that doesn’t need to be folded and put it in the drawer.

The piles that are left only take me a minute to fold and put away.

Kids Clothes:

Because I wash the kids’ clothes together the first thing I do is separate each one’s clothes into their own basket.

Next I take each basket and organize them into piles by clothing type: pajamas, socks, matching outfits, dresses (for Phoebe).

Again, the secret is that I don’t fold most of it.

Now, I’m not saying I wad them up and stuff them in the drawer. But I just lay them in the drawers and it had never really made much of a difference that they aren’t perfectly folded. (Umm, especially since my kids like to pull clothes out of their drawers anyway, so they wouldn’t stay folded anyway.)

And that’s it.

Wash, Dry, Sort, skip most of the folding and put in drawers.

The biggest time savers for me are setting the timer, waiting until everything is dry to put  the clothes away, and skipping the folding.

I hope those tips will help simplify your laundry process like it has for me!