My laundry routine isn’t special or revolutionary. It’s just what works for me. I like hearing how other people clean/organize/etc. because it gives ideas how I can improve my way of doing things, so I thought I’d share this with you all.
Growing up, each of us kids did not do our own laundry - we brought our pile of dirty clothes, sheets, and towels to the laundry room and put them in their designated hampers. Whoever was in charge of the laundry washed and folded everything. It was really efficient, especially since my mom had a specific way of washing everything. By the time I got married, I did not know how to run a washer or dryer (that’s really embarrassing!).
The day after our wedding, Kris showed me how to run his - and I found that it was really easy. :-)
Now, I do all the laundry in our house (aside from Kris’s brother’s, who lives with us). I’ve tried a few different methods and have figured out what works best for us.
I have three hampers in our closet - whites, darks, and clothes (shirts, pants, etc. Not underclothes). I started keeping my stain remover in our closet instead of the cupboard by the washer down in the basement. It’s much easier to quickly spray a stain, then toss the garment in the hamper rather than trying to remember which shirts have stains when I go to wash them. I lay all wet items over the side of the hamper to dry before they join the pile.
Whites consist of anything that’s, well, white - kitchen towels and wash rags, bathroom, cleaning, and diaper rags (I have a separate container for the diaper rags), socks, underwear, and any clothing that’s white. I wash everything on the “whitest whites” cycle (hot water) with laundry detergent (I don’t even know what brand I use. I get different stuff each time, though we do prefer liquid detergent) and bleach. If the load has baby clothes in it, I’ll do a second rinse. Everything, aside from my shirts, pants, and leggings, goes in the dryer.
Darks are bathroom and hand towels (we only have colored), baby clothes that aren’t white, pajamas, colored socks, underwear, etc. I wash everything on normal (warm water). Again, if the load contains baby clothes, it gets a second rinse. Everything goes in the dryer.
Our (K’s and my) clothes bin has everything that I don’t want to run through the dryer - shirts, pants, dresses, etc. I just do a normal wash, then hang everything on our clothes line in the basement. The only reason that I don’t wash baby K’s clothes in this load is because I’m too lazy to hang up all those little shirts and pants. ;-P
Sheets. I strip and wash both ours and baby’s once a week. I don’t wash anything else with them since the sheets don’t take as long to dry as everything else.
And finally, delicates (aka bras). I used to wash these by hand, but then I discovered the hand wash cycle on our washer. I’ve been doing that for a couple months now and really like the results. I hang up everything on our line.
I originally wanted to wash one load a day, thus spreading out the work of doing laundry, but I usually let everything pile up over a few days, then wash 3 or 4 loads in one day. But I don’t mind that - it’s really satisfying to do it all in one day and I really like folding a big pile of laundry. :-)
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