If you constantly feel like you’re falling behind when it comes to your laundry schedule, these eight laundry routine tips will help get back and stay on track!
Hi friends,
Let’s talk about one of the worst chores out there – laundry!
It’s never ending and once you have kids, it gets even worse. It can become so hard to keep up yet so easy to fall behind! It’s taken me some time, but as a family of five I can finally say that I’m not overwhelmed anymore!
Finding a laundry schedule that works for you and your family can take some trial and error but it’s so worth it! Over the years I’ve learned some MAJOR tips that help keep me on track!
Today I’m going to be sharing my best laundry routine tips that I know will help you too!
8 Family Laundry Routine Tips!
1. Make laundry part of your routine
Starting off strong, this is one the biggest and BEST tips!
If you want to stay on track with laundry you need to start making laundry part of your routine!
What exactly do I mean by this? I mean you need to find a time of day where you can fit in. If you think about it, you have many routines in your day to day life. You have a morning routine, an afternoon routine, a bedtime routine, etc. Laundry needs to be a part of one of these routines just like brushing your teeth!
If you’re only setting a laundry schedule but not fitting it into your routine, you probably find yourself falling behind a lot. Which makes sense, life is busy – especially as a mother! Simply saying “Saturday is laundry day” isn’t enough. Because you know what happens? The day starts and life happens. Someone always needs something, a new mess is made, an appointment pops up, etc. Suddenly its dinner time and you realize you didn’t finish (or maybe even start) laundry!
For me and family, laundry is part of my morning routine four days a week. After dropping off sissy at the bus stop, we head back in, I clean up from breakfast, unload/load the dishwasher and start a new load of laundry like clockwork! No matter what laundry routine you find works for your schedule, it needs to become second nature.
2. Don’t fold your first load of the week
Now, I know this sounds super strange but hear me out on this one!
This is the easiest was to create a snowball effect and keep the ball rolling, I swear. This and tip #1 are hands down the two laundry routine tips that changed the game the most for me! Put them together and you’re golden!
Wash and dry your first load for the week but don’t fold it. Leave it for the next day.
Now, when you go to start your first load for the next day, you already have a load waiting for you to be folded. This means you can get the hard part out the way immediately! The rest of the day the only thing you have left to do is throw that load you started into the dryer. Thats it.
This saves so much time, I swear to you!
3. Do laundry by room
This is another one of my favorite laundry routine tips that really changed the game for me.
Tell me, what’s the worst part of doing laundry?! We all have the same answer – folding!
There’s nothing more overwhelming than sitting down with a giant pile of clean clothes that are all mixed up. Creating 17 different piles of laundry is the worst! If you have multiple kids, it can easily become confusing too when you’re trying to keep track of which pile is for who and what room.
Instead, just try doing laundry by each room that way you know exactly what goes where. This also helps when creating a laundry/cleaning schedule.
4. Wash the bedding first/in the morning
If you have a large family, I strong recommend that you DON’T have a “bedding day” where you wash everyones bedding the same day. Just don’t.
Again, this is another reason why I suggest doing laundry by room. For example, we have 4 bed in my household! If we rounded up and said it takes two hours total to wash and dry one persons bedding – that times four people is EIGHT hours of laundry in a single day. And that’s if drying only takes one hour (thicker bedding sometimes takes a little longer).
So, if you’re following the idea of doing laundry by room, wash the bedding first. Why? Because there’s nothing worse than rushing to make a bed right before bedtime.
If you keep extra bedding sets, this might not be too much of a concern for you. You can easily just make the bed with new bedding right after you start washing the dirty bedding. If you’re like me and only keep extra fitted sheets, this is good rule to live by!
5. Keep multiple laundry baskets in the laundry room
If you haven’t noticed, I really hate having things all mixed up.
Ya know, sometimes life happens and the day takes us by storm. Life as a parent is really unpredictable like that some days!
If for whatever reason you fall behind on folding or putting away laundry, having a couple different empty baskets available to still keep things separated is so helpful for when you finally do have time to tackle them.
I like to have an empty laundry basket sitting directly in front of my dryer pretty much at all times. I personally keep three nested inside each other. With my laundry routine system, even during the most hectic, craziest times of life, I’ve never had more three laundry baskets waiting to be folded.
6. Stop sorting laundry
Did you mom pound into your head how important it was to sort by lights, dark and whites? Yeah.. forget what she said!
Sorting your laundry by lights, darks and whites is a waste of time and money. If you’re still doing this for some reason I’m here to spread the good word – you can stop! Your clothes will be fine I promise!
If you’re still worried about your white-whites not staying extra bright or colors dulling over time, try something like a color catcher that you can throw in the washer!
The only sorting I do and the only sorting I think truly matters is washing temps. Still, I’m not super strict about this either though. I sort by colds and warm/hots (All cold items go together and all warm/hot items go together). These matter the most because washing with things too hot can most definitely shrink your clothes and that’s the last thing we want for kids clothes. We need those to last as long as possible lol!
7. Have a stain treat basket
This laundry routine tip is great for if you have messy toddlers or food eaters!
Generally, if you’re home and have a messy eater, it’s a great idea to simply take their clothes off before feeding them to save yourself the mess all together. Sometimes kid and toddler stains are just unavoidable though!
Keep a small basket in the laundry room specifically for clothes that need to be stain treated and wash them once a week. This is an easy way to keep them separated from the rest of the clothes so that you don’t forget to treat them before washing when you go to dump clothes in the washer. This also avoids feeling the need to start an unnecessary load just because you have a stained item.
A good stain treater like this one won’t have any problems tackling stains that have sat for a couple days.
8. Don’t get too fancy folding
We’ve all seen it. We’ve all seen those “best way to fold clothes” videos.
I get it, they look super pretty and aesthetically pleasing but honestly the way you fold is probably fine. All the shirts in my house are nice and neat and take aprox. 2 seconds to fold while holding them in the air because who has time or space for a folding table?
Better yet, if you have the closet space, just hang as much as you can! Space saving hangers are not only genius but also help you save time because hanging things is so much quicker and easier!
This post was all about family laundry routine tips to help you stay on top of laundry!
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