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How To Save Time Doing Laundry

Does your laundry ever get so piled up that taking on the task makes you feel like a hamster running on a wheel? The fact that you’ll have to wash clothes at some point throughout the week is inevitable. And during busy sports seasons or just plain hectic periods of your life, those baskets of dirty clothes can seem bottomless.

While we can’t ever guarantee that laundry will ever become one of your favorite pastimes, we do have a few tips to help you streamline the process. Learn how to save time doing laundry, so you don’t feel like you’re chained to the washer and dryer.

Organize Your Laundry Room

A sense of order is the foundation you need when trying to figure out how to make laundry easier. If your laundry room is neat and tidy, it’s more likely you’ll know where everything is. That means you’ll spend less time hunting for stain sticks or dryer sheets. You can pick up a few handy tricks from this post on creating a more efficient laundry room.

Sort Your Laundry

Organizing your laundry room is one thing. Going a step further to lessen the disarray among your dirty clothes is an entirely different ballgame. Use separate hampers, baskets or bins to differentiate between lights, darks and delicates. You may even consider having an “urgent” bin for things that need to be washed as soon as possible. Additionally, hang up mesh bags for socks to save yourself the time of weeding those out of piles of clean laundry. A little organization can make a huge difference when it comes to figuring out how to get laundry done faster.

Don’t Let Laundry Pile Up

If you allow your dirty clothes to get out of hand, you’re more or less acting as your own worst enemy. If you really want to learn how to do laundry fast, you need to tackle it on a daily basis. There are many ways you can do this. For example, you could consider doing darks on Mondays and Wednesdays and lighter clothes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Fridays could be for school uniforms, as well as sports and exercise gear. Saturday and Sunday, wash your sheets and towels. You see where we’re going with that. Just find the schedule that works best for your household, so you aren’t greeted by a musty pile of dirties when you walk in the door.

Get Rid of Excess Clothes

The fewer clothes you have in your home, the less you have to wash. It just makes sense, right? So, while you’re thinking about how to make laundry easier, consider going through your closet and donating anything you don’t need. A good rule of thumb is to purge anything that doesn’t fit or items that you haven’t worn in the past year.

Don't Skip the Sorting and Folding

Laundry isn't a chore that ends when the dryer stops. You still have to take care of those clean garments. Otherwise, they'll just end up piled on your couch or getting washed again because you left them in the basket and can't remember if they're clean. Fold and hang up your clothes immediately after they come out of the dryer so that you're done with them ASAP. (This can also help reduce wrinkles in fabrics!) Take this step to the next level by learning some tips on closet organization, including color coding.

Make it a Multitasking Event

If you really want to win top points for knowing how to save time doing laundry, you’ll need to up the ante with some multitasking. As your laundry spends a lot of time in the washer or dryer, this is really the perfect opportunity to get a few other things done. Challenge yourself to put away clean dishes and wipe down your countertop while a load of wash is going, or see if you can finish all the dishes in the sink before the dryer buzzes. Additionally, work some fun into the chore: Listen to an audiobook or podcast while sorting and stain treating. When it’s time to fold, catch up on episodes of your favorite show.

You might never get excited about having to do the laundry, but these tips should help you figure out how to better manage your time.

And if life is keeping you so busy that getting a chance to wash clothes sounds like a vacation, it might be time to call in the cleaning cavalry. Your local Merry Maids is here to lend a hand with your housekeeping duties, so that you can carve out some time to unwind.