5 Simple Laundry Home Life Hacks
5 Simple Laundry Home Life Hacks to add to your Homemaking Schedule! Mom Life Hacks and Self Care Ideas for your Productive Routine for Moms
There’s no getting around it, laundry is a boring, tedious, but absolutely necessary task. I’ve spent some time trying to think of ways to make laundry less of a chore and I thought I’d share 5 simple laundry hacks that have helped make laundry more manageable each week.
Simple Laundry Hack # 1 – Split loads by person, not colors/whites
One of the most time-consuming parts of laundry (aside from folding) is sorting clothes. Laundry used to go something like this:
- You gather all the laundry from all over the house.
- Sort the laundry by color/type (lights, darks, towels, etc.)
- Wash and dry one type at a time.
- Fold laundry
- Sort into piles by person.
- Put laundry away.
You can save a couple of these steps by not sorting. Instead, have dedicated hampers throughout the house for each load of laundry. For example, my kids each have a hamper, my husband has one, I have one, and we have a separate one for towels. This allows everyone to sort the laundry AHEAD OF TIME. This way you’re washing one category at a time, and don’t have to sort at the beginning/end of the process.
You may be wondering if I then have to do double the loads of laundry, one light and dark load per person. I’ve found that 95% of our laundry is dark, so there is really little need to split laundry by lights/darks. If it turns out I have a lot of lights I may pull those out and run them separately, but I rarely have to do that. Do what works best for your family!
Simple Laundry Hack # 2 – Get a laundry sorter (and labels too)
Speaking of sorting, having a laundry sorter is definitely a plus! I have this 4-bag laundry sorter from Amazon as well as some cute labels that I got from Etsy. This is just a super nice way to store your laundry throughout the week. I keep this in the laundry room so that it’s right there when I’m ready to start a load!
Simple Laundry Hack # 3 – Get on a schedule
One of the main reasons I never wanted to do laundry was because it felt like it NEVER ENDED. I’ve got two kids and a husband who seems to wear at least 3 outfits per day. This leads to a lot of loads of laundry each week. I tried doing one load a day, but I found that
- I HATED doing laundry every day
- I actually didn’t have a full load to do every day, so this ended up feeling wasteful
Realizing that doing a little laundry every day was too much for me, I focused on finding a schedule that worked for our family. For us, that meant 4 loads per week. I split this into two laundry days:
- Laundry Day 1 – My clothes and my husband’s clothes
- Laundry Day 2 – Kids clothes and towels
Simple Laundry Hack # 4 – Don’t fold kids’ clothes
This simple laundry hack may not be for everyone. If you have young kids and can get away with it, skip the folding. This is a great way to save a ton of time folding those tiny articles of clothing! Have one drawer dedicated to shirts and one to pants/shorts. This is a great way to get the kids involved in putting laundry away as well, since they can just place the shirt in the drawer without worrying about keeping it neatly folded.
You may be worried about the wrinkles, but honestly I feel like my kids drawers always end up a mess anyways, especially now that my kids are getting dressed themselves. I don’t notice their clothes being wrinkled when they’re wearing them. I’m sure a day will come when this strategy won’t work any more, but for now I’m going to enjoy the extra time it saves me!
Simple Laundry Hack # 5 – Make folding fun by adding some entertainment
This one is probably obvious, but if you try to trick your brain into looking forward to folding laundry (which in my opinion is the worst, most time-consuming part), then it makes it less of a chore. Find a YouTube channel or a podcast you like. There’s always TV shows or Netflix as well!
Bonus Hack
If you haven’t had enough simple laundry hacks, here is a bonus one! If you have a lot of clothes that can’t go in the dryer, invest in some laundry racks that attach to the wall. They don’t sell the exact kind I purchased anymore, but here is something similar.
Thanks for reading this list of 5 simple laundry hacks! For more laundry inspiration, check out this post where I talk about how I stained my butcher block counter top using gel stain in my laundry room.
