Basic Tips to Keep in Mind on Laundry Day

Laundry day is likely your least favorite day of the week, but it doesn’t have to be quite so difficult. By attacking your piles of laundry with a bit of pre-planning, you can make laundry day much more manageable. Here are a few tips to keep in mind.

  1. Separate lights and darks ahead of time. To avoid the tedious task of separating lights from darks, separate them as soon as you toss your dirty clothes in the hamper. Invest in a double-sided hamper that does the separating for you.
  2. Invest in good detergent. Using the wrong detergent (or a cheap brand) can make your clothes come out dull and dingy. Instead, choose one detergent designed for washing dark clothes in cold water, one for keeping colors bright, and a separate stain treatment to put on spots.
  3. Treat stains as soon as they happen. The most important thing you can do to remove a stain is catch it as soon as it happens. You can even rub in a stain treatment and toss your clothes in the laundry, leaving the stain to deal with on laundry day.
  4. Turn clothes inside out. Avoid fading and shrinking by turning your clothes inside out before washing them.
  5. Fold right away. To eliminate the need for ironing, prevent wrinkles by folding your clothes as soon as they come out of the dryer.

Laundry 911: Color care basics [She Knows]
How to Care for Your Clothes [How Stuff Works]
Laundry Basics – Sorting it Out [For Better Living]

Speed Through Laundry Day With These 4 Organization Tips

You love the fresh, clean feeling of having all of your laundry done, but getting there is a whole different story. Laundry day may be time-consuming, but there are ways to make it easier. Here are a few tips to help you organize your laundry and get it done in half the time.

  1. Sort laundry without even trying. It takes a lot of time to sort through your mountain of dirty clothes and separate the lights from the darks. Invest in a three-compartment hamper to do the sorting for you.
  2. Bleach more effectively. Bleaching seems like a fool-proof way to remove stains from white clothing, but it doesn’t always work as effectively as you’d like. The proper way to bleach clothes is by first letting the clothing soak in a pool of water. Add one cup of bleach and one cup of dishwashing detergent and let it soak for about half an hour. Finally, dump the whole thing into the washing machine and wash as you normally would.
  3. Prevent damage. To reduce fading, turn dark colored items inside out before washing. Use the cold water setting to prevent clothes from shrinking, and then hang them to dry instead of using the dryer. Also, only wash delicates, like bras and underwear, in a lingerie bag on the delicate cycle.
  4. Invest in a drying rack. Rather than tossing delicate items over the shower curtain rod or rigging some other kind of makeshift drying rack, invest in the real deal. They're usually inexpensive, and they fold into a flat shape to tuck away when not in use.

10 Tips and Tricks for Easier Laundry Days [Yahoo!]
Easy Laundry Tips [The Nest]
How to Do Laundry More Effectively [Babble]
13 Ways to Make Laundry Day Easier [BHG]

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