Laundry Tips To
Speed Up Housework

Doing your laundry often is the easiest and least time consuming way to do speed up your housework chores. Some people let their laundry build up into huge piles. That is too demoralizing for me. I stay on top of it by doing a load every few days.

I currently live in an apartment building that has machines in the basement for the tenants. It is a 4 unit building and I kind of know when others normally do their laundry so I don’t try to do mine during a busy time.

I just wash everything together in cold water except for towels. I wash towels and sheets every 2 – 4 weeks because I have enough to last that long. If I were to buy new towelsI would buy nicer, fewer towels and wash them more often.

I want to have all my clothes available all the time for whenever I need them for. That means I need to keep washing them often. I only have the minimum amount of good clothes that I want and that I look good in. In order for my system to work, I need to do this housework task every few days.

I have found that my system works best if I do laundry of my clothes on Tuesday, Friday night or Saturday morning and Sunday night. By doing it this often I can fit in all my clothes from the laundry basket in one load.

So I only need about 45 minutes for the whole process. This includes, carrying the laundry down to the basement laundry, loading the machine, going back upstairs and waiting for 30 minutes, going back downstairs to get the laundry, carrying it back upstairs and then hanging all the clothes to dry. I then have 30 minutes to do some other housework or something I want to do.

I hang all my clothes to dry rather than using a dryer. My bedroom has 2 large closets. One closest is full of my clothes and the other I use for hanging the clothes to dry. This way I save money and time on the drying and my clothes stay in better shape. Did you ever notice that the lint you clean out of the dryer is your clothes wearing away?

By doing my laundry housework this often I always have my favorite clothes available to wear. Obviously, if I miss a day or two it’s not a big deal.

There are some clothes that I do wear more than once such as jeans, pajamas, lounge wear, sweatshirts and clothes that I wear around the house to do housework or relax. Clothes that I wear to work, going out in public and working out only get worn once. You should go by the smell and feel of the clothes. If you only wear a shirt for an hour to do something that doesn’t involve sweating, then it probably could go back in the closet.

These are the basic laundry items that you need:

1. 3 tall laundry baskets. 1 for clothes. 1 for towels. 1 for sheets. If there are people in your family, each should have a clothes basket or one per bedroom.

2. Large plastic clothes pins. I have 20 of them. You will need more if you have more people.

3. Plastic hangars. You need enough to hang all your clothes plus do the laundry because there are a lot of clothes to hang to dry that will be folded and put away. There are some special hangars that work well for laundry. There are kinds that have built in clothes pins. There are kinds with little hooks for holding straps (mostly for girls and women’s clothes, I guess). There are kinds with notches on the top that are good for holding boxer shorts or underwear. Wire hangers are worthless and should be thrown away immediately.

4. Detergent.

5. Spot cleaner.

6. Quarters in a container if you don’t have your own washing machine and dryer.

You really need to stay on top of this type of housework. Having big piles of laundry is really unsightly and smelly. Plus. its demoralizing to see big piles or an overflowing basket.

The best part of doing laundry often is having your favorite clothes clean and ready to wear.

Don't forget that getting it washed is only part of the process. You still need to put it away. Big piles of clean clothes are unsightly too, just not smelly.

When I was married, my wife did all the laundry. She didn't want me to do any of it. I would gladly have been involved. It's not that hard, the machine does all the cleaning. All you do is put it in, push the buttons and take it out. It's something anyone can handle.

Anyway, she made a big production on how hard it was. She never wanted to fold the clean clothes and put them away. It wasn't that she was working a 40 hour a week job. She didn't work outside the home at all.

For awhile I was working a lot of overtime. I would get to work by 7 a.m. and be home around 7 p.m. I would get home and want to change into some comfortable clothes, relax, eat and maybe do a few things around the house.

When I'd get into the bedroom the bed would be mounded high with clean clothes.

I would start folding the clothes immediately. I hated having the bed full of clothes and did want to do my part of the housework. I was looking forward to going to bed in a few hours and didn't want to deal with those clothes when I was exhausted and ready for sleep.

She would get really upset with me for folding the clothes. I thought I was helping. If she didn't want me to fold them, why were they on the bed?

Make your housework simpler and easier by doing your laundry often, having a system in place for maximum efficiency and make sure and put the clean clothes away, right away.

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