7 Strategies to Make Laundry Day Less of a Chore

With families so busy these days, the laundry room can be one of the most cluttered areas of a home. Kids are notorious for changing clothes frequently and adults often drop items as they come in the door. Often by the end of the week, the laundry room and hampers are overflowing and the weekend is spent performing the arduous task of doing laundry. So how does a busy family spend less time doing laundry and more time enjoying the weekend? By organizing the laundry process and laundry room to make the task a less time consuming chore.

Here are some tips to make laundry day much more efficient:

1. Assign one to two days a week as laundry day. If you run your washer and dryer less often it saves time and money on your electric bill. In our home we do laundry over the weekend and one load mid-week on Wednesday.

2. Make laundry day a family affair. There is no good reason for the home manager to be responsible for the family’s laundry without help. This is a chore that children need to learn and it makes the job much more manageable when everyone pitches in.

3. In a common area between bedrooms, replace the traditional one basket hamper with a three to four section laundry sorter. Clothes are then sorted by color as they go into the hamper, saving the entire step of sorting laundry by loads (color, whites, etc.) In our home, we use a laundry sorter that looks like the chrome example below, but there are several styles to choose from. Take it from my experience however, don’t pinch pennies and buy a cheap model ~ this system will get lots of use, and from my experience, the less expensive (less sturdy) models don’t hold up over time. This one tip will save you about 20 minutes per weekend.

4. Train your children to wear a piece of clothing at least twice. This was a habit I had to break in my youngest daughter, who found it easier to throw every piece of clothing she took off into the laundry basket instead of hanging it up. I developed a sign that hung over my kid’s laundry sorter that said “STOP, is that item really dirty? If not, hang it up and wear again.” Setting that expectation reduced our weekly laundry volume by about 30%.

5. Set up an organizer that contains your most used laundry supplies near the washer and dryer. That means detergents, softener, stain removers, hangers and baskets all in one place.

6. Assign each family member a basket or designated area for their clean clothes. As clothing comes out of the dryer, each family member is responsible to fold and put away their own items, then return the basket. Use these handy sorting labels for hanging clothes Simple Division Garment Organizers to separate clothes in a laundry room by each family member. Each family member can easily find their clothes to return to their room.

7. When purchasing new clothes, get into the habit of reading clothing labels and select fabrics that hold their color well, resist stains and wrinkles, such as polyester or rayon mixes. This will reduce the arduous job of ironing. I don’t even own an ironing board anymore.

I am in the process of developing a laundry sorting tool into a product that has helped many, many of my clients. You’ll be amazed how this one tool will reduce the time you spend doing family laundry. I can’t wait to introduce it to you in the next few months.

Originally posted 2008-09-20 08:16:24. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Is Your Laundry Getting the Care it Deserves?

If you’re like most busy folks, the answer is probably no. Most people don’t stop long enough to find out what all those little symbols mean. Even if you do think about it, they are usually written so small you’d have to have a magnifying glass to see the words!

Well here is a FREE quick 1-page printable that will help you out. It can be posted in the laundry room as a reminder to you or show your family members how to care for clothes so they last longer. This printable was a great resource when I was teaching my children (now 11 & 14) how to do the family laundry. It’s also a great resource for teens who may be moving out soon or anyone who doesn’t do the laundry often enough to remember what the symbols mean!

Here’s another handy laundry organizing gadget that we couldn’t do without in our home – Lock-A-Socs.

This handy gadget keeps a pair of socks matched all the way through the laundry process. You just stick the toe of each sock in the pair through each gripper and drop them in the laundry basket or washer. The pair of socks stay matched through the wash, dryer and then back into the drawer. Each family member can have a different color, making putting socks away much easier as well.

No more sorting socks! Can you imagine the time you’ll save each week? We saved a good hour by not having to sort the family’s socks each week after they came out of the dryer. The socks make it back into my our drawers much quicker too. The Lock-A-Soc completely eliminates the sock sorting and matching process.

Lock-A-Socs can be found in our store – The Simplified Home.net.

I’d love to hear your time-saving laundry tips – please leave your tips below in the comments.

Originally posted 2010-05-13 11:26:59. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Imagine Never Having to Sort Socks Again!

In most homes, sock piles abound! Socks seem to have a life of their own. How do they end up in so many places throughout our home?

Socks travel through several stages in the wash and wear cycle – from dresser drawer, being worn, to the washer, dryer, then sorted and matched with their mate, before they make it safely back to the dresser drawer. With so many steps in the process, no wonder they get lost and mismatched.

Socks that end up in mismatched piles and never make it safely back to the dresser drawer are useless clutter.

Have you considered the time it takes to match socks coming out of the laundry and getting them back in the drawer. Before I found the tool I’m about to tell you about, in our home our socks made it out of the laundry, but never seemed to get matched up, so they stayed in a yellow basket where each family member had to go to fish out and match up a pair of socks to wear for the day. Think of the daily chaos just trying to get dressed X 3. Only until it got so bad that my entire household’s inventory of socks were piled in a laundry basket, would I wage a sock sorting event. I got the kids involved by putting in a movie and all of us would spread out on the floor and match up socks, typically for the duration of the movie.

Perhaps you’re guilty of having “sock clutter”? Sock clutter consists of those orphan socks that litter your home, never to be worn again because the mate has been lost somewhere in the laundry process.

What if you had a tool that would eliminate both of these sock chores forever?

• The hours spent each week sorting and matching each family member’s socks
• Orphan sock clutter
• Fighting about whose socks are whose.

IMAGINE … never losing another sock or having to sort piles of socks again! Think of the time and space you’d get back. Imagine mornings running smoothly when family members now have easy access to a pair of socks.

As a Professional Organizer and busy mom of two, I am always on the look-out for home organizing and management tools that simplify daily home functions. Imagine how excited I was when I found Loc-A-Soks (also called Sock-Locks.)

With Sock-Locks you eliminate lost / orphan socks forever and save the time wasted sorting and matching socks.

With Loc-A-Sok, socks go from washer to dryer to dresser drawer all without sorting or losing socks.

Made in four bright colors (Blue, Hot Pink, Lime Green and Purple), you can assign a different colored set (10 Sock-locks per pack) for every family member and easily keep socks separated throughout the laundry process.

Sock-Locks work for all types of socks. Simply insert each sock, toes first through the grippers. The Loc-A-Sok is a one-step process designed to keep any socks paired from your laundry basket, to the washer, the dryer and into the dresser drawer.

No need to remove the Loc-A-Sok until socks are ready to wear. Store Sock-Locks near the laundry basket and attach socks to the Sock-Lock before dropping them in the laundry basket.

Made of durable plastic for long-term use, each pack includes enough for 10 pairs of socks, or 20 pairs of thin socks. Sock-Locks come in four colors making it easy to assign a different color to each family member.

As an Organizing Consultant, I recommend the Loc-A-Soks to anyone who wants to save time, eliminate inefficient home management tasks, teach their children organizational skills, save money by losing fewer socks, and be more organized, especially busy moms like me.

Sock-Locks make the perfect gift for busy moms, new mothers, caregivers, those with memory challenges … and really anyone! Everyone can benefit from this time-saving product.

Learn more about Loc-A-Soks.

Originally posted 2009-09-07 14:53:34. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

Organizing Small Spaces – Lovely Organized Laundry Rooms

So far in my weekly Organizing Small Spaces series I’ve addressed your home’s entry way and bathrooms. The third installment in the series is about organizing your laundry room.

Do you dread visiting your laundry room? Maybe you’d have more fun sorting your whites if the space was more organized!  Here are a few tips for making it a pleasant and inviting atmosphere.

There’s no reason a laundry room has to be dark and dingy. Paint the walls a light, happy color. Make sure to use the maximum-allowed bulb wattage in your light fixtures. Add task lighting, as needed, some inexpensive, framed artwork to the walls, and a clock or timer.

If you need more storage space, add a couple of rows of shelving above the washer/dryer. Keep laundry necessities – such as detergent, stain removal pens, fabric softener, an iron, starch, and bleach – within easy reach so you can grab and go. Use baskets and boxes (labeled of course) to hold not-as-frequently used things such as clothespins, old rags, and your pile of missing-a-mate socks. If you prefer hidden storage, install some inexpensive cabinets on one wall (available at any home improvement store).

Drying racks are nice if you enjoy line-drying your clothes. There is even a variety of wall-mounted, fold-out options available that will save floor space.

To make laundry day easier for everyone, implement a laundry sorter/hamper and teach your family to place whites in a white basket or hamper and darks in a colored basket. Our laundry sorter has been a life-saver. I’ve taught my kids to use it religiously. If they don’t get their laundry in the sorter it doesn’t get washed. I recommend purchasing or constructing a laundry sorter that is very sturdy – don’t try a cheap one.  If you prefer that you kids have their own laundry basket, the collapsible kind is preferred – it takes up less room and can be flattened and slid under a bed or between furniture when empty. This type is great for dorm rooms and apartments too.

Do you battle the piles of unsorted socks in your home? To get dressed in the morning, do your kids have to go fishing in the abis of unsorted socks to find a matching pair. That used to be our story. But I found Loc-A-Soks. With Loc-A-Soks (also called Sock-a-Locs) you’ll never have to sort socks again, because a pair is matched before going into the laundry, and a pair stays matched together with Loc-A-Sok gripper through the entire laundry process.  Kids love the bright colors and find it fun to stick their socks in the grippers.

If you dry clean frequently, add a separate basket for dry cleaning, preferably close to the door where you leave the house. Having the basket there will be a reminder as you are leaving the house.

Place clean, folded laundry in color-coded or labeled laundry baskets. Have family members retrieve their baskets from the laundry room, or deliver them to their rooms, so they can put away their own stuff. Remember … many hands make light work!

For more tips and ideas about getting kids to help with laundry and other household chores, learn about our household chore system, Mom, Can I Help Around the House.

Originally posted 2010-07-02 13:54:13. Republished by Blog Post Promoter