Five Tips for Managing the Laundry in Your Home
You won’t want to have stacks of dirty clothing and linens in your home, so you must learn how to master the laundry processes with these expert tips.
Tip 1: Sort Items Each Day
Rather than piling all of the laundry into one basket or lidded plastic tote, you should have multiple containers that are labeled for each type of item. This will make laundry day easier because you can grab a container quickly to begin the washing process. You should sort items by color, keeping darker colors away from lighter colors. Red, orange or yellow fabric dyes tend to leach onto other fabrics, but newer garments and linens of other colors often bleed dyes onto other items.
Tip 2: Clean Pockets before Placing Garments into the Containers
Train everyone in your family to clean out the pockets of garments before placing items into the containers. This can prevent huge problems from decomposing facial tissues or leaking ink pens. However, you should still check the pockets of everything before placing the items into a washing machine.
Tip 3: Hand-washing Versus Machine Washing
When you are ready to wash laundry, there are some things that require washing by hand. You can have your children and spouse place delicate items in a separate container, but you may need to find these items while filling the washer. Hand-washable items can include items that have embellishments, such as lace, embroidery or ribbons. It is better to wash sweaters by hand so that the garments don’t stretch into an unrecognizable shape. You can wash hand-washable items together as long as the fabrics are a similar color and you can use a gentle detergent with cold water to wash these items in a sink. These items can dry on a hanging rod so that the garments aren’t damaged by heat.
Tip 4: Choosing the Proper Laundry Detergent
If you are using cold water to wash your clothing and linens, then liquid laundry detergent is often a better choice. Powder detergents dissolve better in warm water, so if you use this type of laundry detergent in cold water, then you may have powdery residue on your linens and garments. There are also specialty laundry detergents that contain bleach, but this chemical can damage garments by fading the fabrics. If you want to protect the color of darker garments, then you can buy laundry detergent that will protect the dyes in the fabrics.
Tip 5: Don’t Allow Laundry to Pile Up
It is easier to wash a load of laundry during the week rather than having 10 loads on Saturday. To wash a load of laundry, it can take up to an hour before you must hang things to dry or place the items in the dryer. In addition, if the garments or linens have any stains, it is better to wash the items right away so that the substances on the fabrics don’t stain the things permanently.
