4 Simple Laundry Hacks to Save You Time & Energy
Everyone has a least favorite chore. For most people, it's either dishes or laundry. Kallie Branciforte of But First, Coffee could do dishes all day long if she never had to put her laundry away ever again. However, with two small children and a third baby arriving any moment now, she has had to get a lot better about her laundry systems.
Today, Kallie is going to share some hacks, tricks, and methods she has adopted over the last few years to take her from someone who could never get on top of her laundry to someone who feels the task is much more manageable.
1. Make it a daily task
The first tip she shares is the habit of doing laundry every single day. Whenever she finds something she is having a hard time tackling or getting on top of, she makes it a daily habit.
By creating a daily habit, it becomes something Kallie does on autopilot. She developed a routine where every morning she goes down and checks on the status of her laundry. She puts in a clean load, switches the washer to the dryer, or takes the clothes out of the dryer and brings them upstairs.
She doesn't necessarily fold or put away the laundry at this time. She also does it right after her kids go to bed, using habit stacking to tie it to her existing habit of turning on the coffee machine.
2. Don't take clean clothes to the bedroom
Instead of carrying the clean laundry to the bedroom where it would sit in baskets for days, Kallie keeps it in her living space.
She puts the clean clothes right smack dab in the middle of the living room, on the dining room table, or even on the kitchen island. This way, she doesn't forget about it and can quickly sort or fold it during her day-to-day activities.
She uses any free 10 minutes she has, such as when her kids are eating a snack, to sort the laundry. She no longer allows folded and sorted clothes to go back into the basket. Each pile gets carried up individually and put away immediately.
3. File fold to save space
File folding allows Kallie to store clothing vertically, making it easy to see everything in the drawer and quickly grab what she needs. She also applies this method to her kids' clothes, assigning specific drawers for pajamas, tops, and bottoms.
It allows her kids to be more involved in the laundry process, and the clothes don't get as messy when pulled out.
4. Keep stain remover in the kitchen
Other laundry hacks she mentions include keeping a stain remover in the kitchen for quick stain treatment, having a laundry basket accessible from the kitchen to gather dirty clothes, and using durable canvas laundry baskets with oversized handles.
She also recommends a collapsible laundry basket for convenience when a basket is needed unexpectedly.
Time-saving laundry hacks
These are Kallie Branciforte's favorite time-saving and frustration-saving laundry hacks that she has developed over the years. She has made the laundry feel more manageable and less overwhelming.
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Two more hacks: when I had kids at home, I taught them early to put their laundry basket outside of their bedroom with the item of the day: darks, lights, colors, towels or sheets. Each weekday of the week had a task and we all knew what it was. My laundry was off of my kitchen so I would do that load that day. For me I hated cleaning up the kitchen, so while the rest of the family did that every night, I folded the laundry.