I’d like to share with you five top tips for organizing your laundry or your washing whatever you want to call it.
The first one is reduce the amount.
Which sounds a bit daft but I went to a house where they had probably about 30 towels, and that was for the whole family, but it was far too many of them. And because they had got so many, rather than wash the ones that they had (which they were struggling with admittedly) they would just get another one out of the cupboard.
When we realised how many towels they’ve got, we got rid of quite a lot of them, and then there isn’t the possibility for all that washing to build up.
So reducing the amount of clothes you have can be a really good start. Some people tend to buy more when they haven’t got time to wash, and that can get you into a bit of a dangerous cycle. So decluttering, reducing the amount of what you have first.
Having a big enough basket for your dirty washing.
I went to a lady’s house the other day and she’d actually got a washing basket that was separated, so it was white’s and darks. So when they put the washing in they put it into the separate sides of the basket and then you could just pick a load out really easily. It’s not always going to be easy with people sorting, but it should definitely help the process.
Another thing is having the space to sort it.
Quite often on top of our washing machines and on top of our tumble dryers, we will store lots of things and pile things up on top of them.
If you can put that somewhere else, that might just give you a little bit of space where when it comes out you can actually fold it up there and then, you’re not having to go somewhere else and use for example the dining table, and get in the way of life.
Because I know for me if I start sorting stuff and then get distracted and have to do something else, then all of a sudden I’ve got a heap of clothes all over the dining room table – which doesn’t really work. So having some space to sort it is really key.
Also having space to store it as well.
For example your ironing, if you have a place where your ironing pile can go, in an airing cupboard, or somewhere like that, then that means that it’s just not going to be sitting on a chair, or on the bedroom floor, or somewhere where it’s getting in the way.
Even a space in the wardrobe would work and that’s where the ironing heat goes, that can really work. So having some sort of space to actually store it can be really crucial.
The last thing really which is a key thing, is allocating the time to do it.
Now this is really difficult and often we haven’t got time in our lives, it’s very very busy. So if you can, I really encourage you to delegate it.
I don’t do the ironing, I don’t iron anymore, I get things straight out of the tumble dryer and try and hang them up straight away, so I don’t do ironing anymore.
But if you can get it to an ironing service and get them to do it for you, there’s also people who will come and take you out laundry as a whole and take it away and do it for you. So delegating is another thing.
Other than that you could always get other the other family members involved. So you know see if you can get, if your kids are a bit older, see if you can give them a few quid just to do stuff for you, it gets them to learn some life skills as well.
So just to run through it again, the top tips;
- Reduce the amount you’ve got, try and get rid of the excess so you haven’t got loads of stuff.
- Make sure you’ve got a big enough basket for all your dirty stuff so it’s not piling all over the floor.
- Make sure you’ve got some space to sort it out, on top of your tumble dryer, your washer, wherever that may be.
- Also make sure you’ve got some space to store it, so an ironing pile.
- And then allocating the time to do it or delegating it.
I hope that’s helped, take care.