How to Keep Up with Laundry, 5 Tips that Can Help
Today, I’m sharing how to keep up with laundry. These 5 tips can help you tackle your mountain of laundry and keep it away.
Laundry its one task that is never-ending. As soon as you get all the clothes done, there’s more to do the very next day.
It’s easy for the laundry to pile up quickly and become overwhelming. But the tips in this podcast can help you keep up with laundry, so you never have to stare down a mountain of laundry again.
Laundry was easy to keep up with when my husband and I were first married. We both had uniforms to wear for work, so the only laundry we had were clothes we wore after work. I only had to do laundry once or twice a week.
Considering I had to go to the laundry room to do our laundry in the mobile home court we lived in, I was glad to only have that task, twice a week.
Once we had our own home and our own washing machine and dryer, I thought keeping up with the laundry would be easy. And it was until our first child was born.
With the baby came lots of laundry, much more than I expected. With projectile vomiting (sorry for the graphic image that might have brought up) we both had to change clothes more than once a day. Just keeping up was hard.
Then we switched to cloth diapers, and the laundry seemed to be never-ending. Between the diaper and the clothes changes to keep from stinking all day, one to two loads a day was a minimum to keep up.
I won’t lie, I struggled for a while but found a groove in getting the laundry done. It has served us well over the years, even after the diaper and vomit clothes had passed.
In this podcast, I’m sharing tips that help me keep on top of our laundry each week.
Does that mean I never get behind? No, but when I work my laundry system, we keep on top of it and never have over two loads to do at a time.
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Show Notes…
This is the cliff notes version of the podcast above just in case you’d rather get your tips in written form.
Tips for How to Keep up with Laundry
1. Get the Dirty Clothes to the Washer
Having convenient places to deposit dirty clothing helps to keep them from building up on the floors in the kid’s rooms, on chairs or the floors in the bathroom.
2. Have Set Laundry Days or Do a Load Everyday
Set a day of the week or days of the week to do your laundry and stick to them. If it’s laundry day throw a load into the washer right away. If you have a schedule and do the laundry on those days, the laundry won’t get out of hand.
If you find it’s hard to stick to a schedule for laundry, do a small load every day instead.
3. Set a Timer
Set a timer to go off when the washer is done. This will help remind you to put the laundry into the dryer. Then if you don’t have time to fold at least there will be laundry clean and dry waiting in the dryer.
4. Fold While you Do Something Else
Fold laundry while you are watching tv, earning Swagbucks by watching videos, or listening to a podcast. Doing another task that doesn’t take your full attention while folding laundry can help make the folding the laundry easier.
5. Let Everyone Put Away their Own Laundry
If you do the laundry let everyone put their own laundry away. I’ve found by age 5 kids can put their own laundry away. I will sometimes take my kid’s folded laundry to their rooms for them to put it away. It gives them the responsibility to help with the laundry even if they are at school when laundry is being done.
What tip could you add to this list that has helped you keep up with laundry and avoid the dreaded mountain for laundry at your house?
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This is a great episode for staying organized with the laundry. Here are my tips that are particular to our family situation: our laundry is on the same floor as the bedrooms, so it works best for us to have a hamper in each bedroom. I like to change the sheets on Sundays, so after we get up that morning I strip the beds and start that load immediately. When that is done I do a load of towels. I work outside the home full time, so I do the rest of the laundry one load at a time in the evenings after work M-F. I fold and put away each load as it comes out of the dryer to avoid clothes piling up because I would not be able to fold a big pile until the weekend. Doing one load at a time keeps the house neat and I have a sense of accomplishment.
Sounds like you have a great system for keeping up with the laundry at your house. Thanks for sharing your tips, Dorothy!
I aim to do laundry on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, start to finish (meaning it gets put away by the end of the day. That has kept the number of loads down, the kids always have their favorite shirt clean, and I don’t have to worry about running out of towels.
My oldest puts all her clothes away, but I still have to help my youngest, because he isn’t tall enough to reach the bar in his closet.
Got any tips for a person who has been very ill, and the laundry feels like it’s piled to the ceiling?! It’s actually spread out on the floor, because the hamper can’t hold it all!
PLEASE HELP!!
Overwhelmed in Tennessee
Sandra, first let me say I’m so sorry you been very ill and hope you are getting better. My best tip would be to start a load each day to start slowly working through the clothes. If you get into the habit of one load a day it’s not as overwhelming, through the washer and dryer. Even if it doesn’t get folded it will make a difference. I like to fold clothes while watching tv because I don’t like to fold clothes at all so doing something else helps me get it done even when I don’t feel like it. I hope that can help. Just a little a day can make a big difference. Praying you are better soon.