Laundry Hacks

Both you and your family will benefit from knowing how to correctly do laundry. The best time to start teaching is when kids are toddlers and want to do everything you are doing. A toddler can bring clothes to the laundry room and even begin to sort clothes by colors.

Shopping wisely is an important step in making laundry easier and reducing the number of laundry loads. Take time to read labels, study garment construction, and select fabrics that will make laundry easier.

How many times have you picked up a pair of jeans or a shirt and wondered if it is clean? Most of us have a habit of trying something on, deciding not to wear it and dropping it on the floor or laying it over a chair. Or we wear a shirt once and decide that maybe it could be worn again and leave it in a spot and then forget whether it is clean or dirty.

Taking care of household laundry can be overwhelming if you let it pile up. Fortunately, these days we have better equipment, more effective laundry products, and easier care fabrics to help with the task. But laundry still takes time to ensure that everyone in the household has clean clothes, towels, and sheets.

Sometimes disaster strikes. Whether it was an accident or someone not knowing that wool and dryers don't mix, somehow your favorite sweater ended up in the hot dryer and now it is a size (or two) too small.

Even if your laundry room is tiny, you have a built-in message center. Just use erasable, whiteboard markers in eye-catching colors to make notes on the washer or dryer lids for yourself or others. When you enlist kids or teenagers to help with laundry, they may not know every tip you do. Help them avoid disasters by leaving notes of what can and cannot be put in the dryer.

Forgetting to remove the clothes from the dryer inevitably leads to wrinkles. So what do you do when the shirt you planned to wear today is filled with them and you don't have time to iron?

No one likes the realization that the one item you need or want to wear was missed during the weekend laundry run. Not only do you need it clean, but you need it to dry as quickly as possible too. Before you toss it in the dryer, add a couple of dry bath towels. They will help absorb some of the moisture and speed up the drying process.

When you buy that replacement box of baking soda for the fridge, get an extra one for the laundry room. Baking soda can boost the performance of your laundry products and even replace a few.

You can make your life so much easier and keep your socks paired up by using a mesh laundry bag to wash them. This is a great tip for baby socks and any small items.