10 Laundry Tips for the New College Student

Let's be honest here, mom and/or dad have always done your laundry for you... and you're kinda tempted to just bring it all home with you one day so your they can still do it for you. However, you won't be able to do that forever and that crazy busy exam time is closer than you think. So... it might be a good idea to learn just a little bit about doing laundry now. Don't worry, I promise that doing your own laundry will a lot easier than college itself. You can do this!

10. Empty the lint dryer for safety reasons.

Seriously... it could cause a fire.

• If you don't where the lint catcher is, please have someone show you before you use the dryer.

9. Button Up Buttons and Zip Up Zippers

If you don't, they could get caught and rip the clothes. I lost a button on one of my favourite shorts... it was sad.

8. Overfilling the washing machine can cause a mini flood.

I can very happily say that this didn't happen to me... but it did happen to someone on my floor in her first year an a college resident.

7. Regular wash is usually fine.

There are a lot of setting on washing machines and there are a lot of labels... chances are if you put everything in cold water you will be fine. That is unless... you have some fancy clothes. If you do have some more expensive clothes, you should take a peek at the labels.

6. Speaking of Labels

Here are what some of the labels mean. I don't want to overwhelm you with all of them... so this is just a small start.

5. Bleaching Whites

This is a thing I have done and it went pretty well. If your white clothes are getting kinda yellow under the armpits or maybe they turned kind of pink because you put them in a hot wash with a red item. Either way, you can try bleaching whites. There is even a little place in each machine for you to put the bleach in.

4. The trick to easily avoiding wrinkles in your clothes is folding them as soon as they are done in the dryer.

If you let them sit in the dryer after it is done its cycle, they will start to wrinkle. If you throw into your laundry hamper without folding them... they will start to wrinkle. With that said, it is okay to wear wrinkly clothes from time to time again. Especially, in the middle of exam week.

Of course, you could always iron your clothes... but who does that?

3. Use Dryer Sheets

They remove static and help your clothes smell better.

• Just to clarify, use them in the dryer and not the washer.
• You can also use them to hide the smell of smoke...

2. Do larger loads.

If you're at laundry matt, or even just have a big laundry room in residence. You can usually use two washing machines at the same time AND fit both loads into one dryer. This saves you time and money.

Plus, if you procrastinate as much as I do... you're going to be doing larger loads anyway...

1. Make a designated laundry day.

School is going to be busy sometimes... and you don't want to wake up one morning to realize that you are out of underwear. So look at your class schedule and pick a time in the week that works for laundry day. It will help a lot!

Thank You!

Thank you for reading my article! I hope it helps you with your first few tackles with your dirty laundry. If you want to read more work by me, I have written lots of blogs on a bunch of different topics. Please feel free to check out the rest of my work on Vocal. It's free to read! If you absolutely loved my work and want to see more stuff like this, please feel free to give a donation. I base my future posts on what receives the most donations, so if you want to see more Prime Video recommendations, donating is the way to do it. No pressure though, you're probably a student if you are reading this and I totally understand if you can't.

Want to read articles like this?