Shrinking Laundry
June 15, 2007
Last month, a lot of you sent me your best tip. I’ve spent a couple days sorting them into the best categories I could, and we’re starting today with some really good laundry tips.
I know. Who likes laundry? Well, maybe some of these tips will make this tedious chore a bit less consuming.
Blog reader Kerri sent in three laundry tips.
Instead of ironing, she uses Downy Wrinkle Releaser. It smoothes out wrinkles and fixes that flipped up edge that jean skirts and khakis can get. AND she’s found a way to make her own a bit cheaper. We like cheaper. She refills the bottle with a capful of regular liqid Downy and fills the rest with distilled water. I don’t know about you, but I really hate ironing so anything that helps eliminate that is wonderful.
Another tip she gave is to sort clothes into baskets as you take them off. She has stacking baskets that work for her, and she says that even preschoolers can sort their own clothes. Get those kids doing whatever little chores they can, right?
Her last tip is a unique one. If she has an article of clothing that has a stain that needs to be treated, she ties the arms or legs in a knot so that when she washes that load, the knot reminds her to treat that stain. This is a great tip, and, Kerri, I’m going to start doing this one because too often until I am hanging up a washed and dried shirt — with a nice permanent stain on the front. Hate that.
Also Julie sent in an interesting tip that I know will work for some but not everyone. She wrote, “We recently revamped our laundry room to include shelves and baskets for everyone’s clothes. I am working on moving one of the dressers from the kids’ room down there, too. My goal is to keep about 75% of our family’s clothes in that one area.”
My initial reaction to this was why on earth? Julie evidently read my mind because she continued, “I want the kids to be able to get dressed in the laundry room, leaving their dirty clothes behind in the proper hampers. No laundry piles in the bedrooms. I want the dressers there so that when we wash, dry and fold, we can put things away immediately without leaving the room. No dressers in the bedrooms, hanging half open with clothes spilling out.”
And Julie adds that she has a rather large laundry room which can accomodate storage shelves and dressers. I know it won’t work for me, but I know of other people who have fairly large laundry rooms and it’s an interesting idea that could work for them. In fact, Julie, how ’bout an update?
I hope those tips got your mind clicking. If you have a great laundry tip that you’d like to leave, please do. The more tips, the better. But the only tips eligible for the Container Store gift card are the ones I received in May. And the winner will be announced June 29.
- On Monday — getting busy in the kitchen!
Comments
4 Responses to “Shrinking Laundry”
Oh, that makes me wish we had a bigger laundry room. Good tips–streamlining is always a good idea, and keeping like things with like. THanks for sharing
Well, since you asked……….it’s finally working like I wanted it too. I have the boys’ dresser in the laundry room and they can immediately put their clean clothes away.
Mostly all we keep in our bedrooms are pj’s and underclothes. Everything else stays in the laundry room. It has made for neater drawers and less cluttered closets.
BTW- Kerri, I loved the laundry tip on the wrinkle reducer made from home. Yippee. I’ll be trying that one.
Great tips will have to try them. Thanks
Kerri is an angel for submitting the tip about refilling the Downy Wrinkle-Release bottle with a capful of Downy and then filling the rest of the way with water (I used filtered rather than distilled, because I have a filter attachment on my sink). I tested it on an old, solid color T-shirt just to make sure it wouldn’t leave spots, and it worked PERFECTLY.