Laundry hacks to make life easier

Surprisingly good laundry tips you didn’t know you needed

We’ve all got our least favourite household chore. I’m a bit of a strange person, I love ironing, it’s a bit of a zen thing for me. But one thing where I do agree with most people on is that my least favourite thing to do around the house is doing laundry. It’s pretty boring, seems to take for ever and we’d all rather be doing something else rather than doing it. From sorting to washing, folding and ironing, there are ways in which you can cut down the time it takes to do your laundry and speed up the task.

Here are a few ways I’ve found to cut down the time it takes get through laundry day or your laundry load and to make it just a bit more bearable.

Planning ahead helps you get ahead

Start by planning ahead. Get the jump on laundry day by planning ahead. From student days to having my own home, the biggest thing I’ve learned about getting ahead with the laundry, it’s this: planning ahead will get it done quicker and leave me more time to get other things done. The more time I spend doing laundry, the more I resent having to spend that time doing it, there are always so many other fun things I could be doing. So I started planning ahead to get it out of the way as quickly as possible.

I time doing the laundry when I can also be doing something else at the same time. If I can watching TV, listening to the radio or catching up on a podcast whilst I’m sorting laundry before or after washing, then I don’t feel like it is time wasted. Even with presorting, fast wash cycles and the quickest drying you can do, no amount of laundry tips can turn a chore into something fun, especially if you’d rather be doing something else! Instead, do that thing whilst you’re doing laundry.

Planning ahead can also involve buying clothes which are either easy iron or which don’t need ironing at all. Then taking them straight out of the machine when the drying cycle is over, folding them straight away means you don’t have to do as much ironing, which most people hate but which I don’t mind at all.

Get more than one laundry hamper

Okay, so one hamper is okay but two or three hampers could be even better. You could even colour code them. A white hamper for a white washes and a darker one for (you guessed it) dark or coloured clothes. You can even buy ones with internal divisions in these to separate delicates out from other things. Each time you take your clothes off, you can sort them straight away into the right laundry bin, it means I never have to sort them when I come to doing the laundry.

If you don’t have either the room for a couple of different laundry hampers or just don’t like the idea of having a few different ones, then you can try using folding laundry bags. These can fold away easily when empty and can be carried around the home straight to your washing machine.

Another good way to sort things out and speed up your laundry can be to save up all your heavy fabrics then wash them all together. Put one thing in your laundry which is a heavier fabric can slow down the drying process and draw things out (which you don’t want). So, save all these things up so that you have one, single long batch of laundry. This is the kind of load you can set to wash whilst your watching a movie, doing the rest of the housework or even going out for a walk. Keeping them out of your regular load means those loads go that big quicker. If you do need to dry things quickly, here are a few things you can do to get it done in a flash.

Socks, oh those socks

If there is one thing which will always be annoying when it comes to doing your laundry it is socks. It almost doesn’t matter what you do to stop them going for a walk, those pesky little things will always find a way to make laundry day suck.

I’ve found a couple of different ways to ensure I always have a pair of socks. The first was declaring sock bankruptcy. I got rid of all my coloured and patterned socks and left myself with just plain black and plain white socks, all from the same brand. It means that even when these socks lose a buddy now and then, there will always be another identical sock to take its place. The second thing I did was to buy a few sock bags. They are nifty little things you can pop all your socks into. They go straight from your laundry bin, into the washing machine and out into your drawer. They are nifty, cheap and they save the headache of continually trying to find your socks.

Folding in a flash

Folding and hanging your clothes can be a really, really boring part of doing your laundry. So, just like with ironing, I tried to turn it into a relaxing part of laundry day. I scoured the web and came across a great trick for hanging clothes faster out of the tumble dryer using a ‘speed hanging method’. Check it out and you’ll have your clothes tidied away in next-to-no-time.

You might already know some of these techniques whilst I hope others are new to you. If you have any great tricks, tips or hints for getting the laundry done quicker share them with us below.

Russell Bowes

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