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Hate Laundry?

30 solutions to help you dread it less

By Marie JonesPublished 3 years ago 13 min read
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Hate Laundry?
Photo by Anca Gabriela Zosin on Unsplash

This listicle is about laundry, but it could be about any "adulting" task that you hate to do or that you put off. Whenever you run up against a feeling of resistance to doing something unpleasant but necessary, play a game with yourself to try to hack the process and make it easier.

The first step in a hack is knowing the process in detail. Laundry involves a lot of steps. You wear the clothes, undress and drop them on the floor, pick them up from the floor and put them in a hamper, drag the hamper to the laundry room, sort the clothes, put clothes in washer, in dryer, clean the dryer lint thingie, take them out of the dryer, fold or hang them and then put them in designated places. I count ten steps for one boring task. Eleven if you iron (I don't) And that doesn't count dealing with hand washing, stains, dry cleaning, or other special treatments. 

Whenever you have a process with a lot of steps, every single one of those steps is a place where you might give up. To hack the process, identify the barriers where the process is likely to get stuck for you. Then identify solutions that reduce the friction to get you past the barrier.

I've identified 30 possible solutions to barriers people might have in the laundry process. As a baseline, I'm assuming that you know out how to do laundry. From there, I think I've hit the main barriers that make people hate doing laundry.

I leave my clothes on the floor and then hate to pick them up.

Solution 1: Don't leave them on the floor! Just kidding. If advice like that worked, everyone's house would be spotless.

Solution 2: Hampers. Make it as easy as possible to put dirty clothes in an appropriate place by having accessible hampers. Have a hamper with no lid everywhere that you most commonly undress. A lid on the hamper is one more thing to mess with, and people who pile things will just put stuff on top of the hamper. I have hampers in my bedroom, closet, and bathroom.

What can I do with clothes that have been worn, but aren't ready to be washed?

Solution 3: Put it away or wash it. If you are the all-or-nothing type, you can just wash everything that you have worn, even if it only touched your body long enough for you to answer the door; alternatively, you can put anything you think you can wear again back in the closet or drawer.

Solution 4: Hooks or coat racks. For the rest of us, you need a designated place to hang clothes to let them air out. In my house, I have a coat rack in the bedroom and hooks on the back of doors. Hooks work really well and can be decorative when they aren't covered in clothing. Another idea is mounting a picture ledge or other shelf on your wall and attaching hooks to the bottom of it.

I hate sorting clothes before washing them.

Solution 5: Hampers for sorting. Have enough hampers to sort clothes right away. In my bedroom, I have two hampers of different colors. One hamper is white, the other dark grey. I put light-colored items in the white bin and dark colored items in the dark grey bin. (I used to have a third bin for hand wash, but I just do those items in a mesh bag with other stuff now). If leaving clothes on the floor isn't an issue for you, put your sorting hampers directly in the laundry room to save having to drag them through the house.

Solution 6: Don't sort much at all. My husband does two loads every week. One of jeans, and one of everything else. His whites get a little dingy over time, but otherwise, it doesn't cause problems. Generally, you can put different colors together in cold water as long as nothing is brand new or the fabric is not colorfast.

I forget to take the clothes out of the washer or dryer.

Solution 7: Loud alarms. When I'm alone, I set the dryer with the loudest and most obnoxious sound it has. My partner hates that sound, so he's my backup alarm.

Solution 8: Appliance features. If you need to buy a washer/dryer, look for features that remove this barrier. Both my washer and my dryer have options for the machine to keep running after the main cycle is over. My Maytag washer calls it "fresh hold" and it means that it runs a fan and tumbles the load until you take it out; the dryer has "wrinkle shield." There are also machines that both wash and dry in a single appliance, which are great in small spaces or apartments.

I don't have enough space to put away my clothes when they are clean.

Solution 9: Create more storage. A brick and board bookcase works well for folded clothes. If you can afford it, buy a wardrobe or a dresser. A freestanding wardrobe rack is a must if you have no closet. More out-of-the-way places are great for clothes that are out of season or seldom worn. Likely locations include under beds or on top shelves of closets.

Solution 10: Learn to fold to save space. There are tons of tutorials online. Just google "how to fold to save space."

Solution 11: Use space more efficiently. Space-saving folding techniques can optimize closet and drawer space. In the closet, a little hardware can add much more room. Since most clothes aren't as long as a closet is tall, you can add a second rod and hang twice as many shirts in the same space, or you can drop the rod to add shelves above. Slimline hangers can help gain some space, as can skirt or pant hangers made to hold a number of items on one hanger.

I hate folding clothes.

Solution 12: If you don't care if an item gets wrinkled, don't bother to fold it. You don't really have to fold anything if you love to iron or don't mind wearing wrinkled clothes. But clothes that are tossed in a drawer take up more space than folded clothes. You also spend more time searching through the pile to find what you want. That said, I don't fold my underwear. I also just fold the top edge of socks to keep them in pairs.

Solution 13: Hang, don't fold. If you have closet space and plenty of hangers, it is much easier to hang clothes than fold them neatly. Consider breaking rules you learned as a child. My spouse hangs his T-shirts and doesn't seem to have the hanger marks on the shoulder that my mother warned me about. I hang bras, scarves, tank tops, workout clothes, and some sweaters.

Solution 14: Put dirty socks in a mesh laundry bag. This makes pairing socks a breeze and single socks won't get hidden inside other clothes or eaten by the washer. It is particularly helpful for everyone in your household to have their own sock bag (pillowcases work too) when you wash for a whole family.

Ironing is even worse.

Solution 15: Fold or hang clothes while they are still warm from the dryer. When I started living with my husband, he asked if I ironed shirts and would I be willing to iron his (he had been sending them to a laundry to be done). I said "heck, no" and showed him that even his cotton dress shirts came out just fine if he shook them out and buttoned them as he put them on hangers fresh out of the dryer. I use the same method with linen, silk, and other wrinkle-prone fabrics. Even if you are a perfectionist, you'll only have to do a light touch-up with the iron if you fold or hang straight out of the dryer.

Solution 16: Don't own clothes that need to be ironed. Did you notice that I didn't even include ironing as a step in a laundry routine? That's because I don't own things that have to be ironed to be wearable. Admittedly, my style is more natural than crisp, but there are definitely clothing choices you can make that maintain a crisp style without actual ironing. But for me, any newly purchased item that turns out to be a wrinkle magnet is likely to go straight into my giveaway bin.

Solution 17: Use the shower to steam wrinkles out. When you do end up with wrinkles, hang up items in the bathroom and turn up the water to the highest temperature on your shower. Close the door and let the room fill up with steam. Wait for at least 10 minutes and the wrinkles should be gone.

I have enough room, but clean clothes still sit in piles or hampers.

Solution 18: Have more than enough hangers. I have a huge closet. Yet clean clothes were still sitting in baskets, waiting to be hung. For not much money, I bought a few packages of hangers (I like the velvet-covered ones best right now) and that helps a lot. Now I take clothes out of the dryer and put them directly on hangers.

Solution 19: Open shelving. When I was in my 20s, I had brick-and-board bookshelves and no dresser. Before unpacking my books, I did laundry. With few options, I folded my clothes and put them on the shelves. Later, when I purchased a regular dresser, I found that the drawers were often empty. Drawers, it turned out, were great places for me to put seldom worn items or things I don't want to fold. So I have an underwear drawer, a sock drawer, a pajama drawer, and a drawer for clothes I only wear at the beach.

I hate going to the laundromat.

Solution 20: Find a better laundromat. The best laundromats offer options to make laundry fun. At the high end, laundrobars are great places to hang out while your wash spins. Any laundromat that doubles as something else (hair salon, comedy club, playground, arcade) is awesome. But even in small towns, there are usually more than one laundromat to choose from. Try to find the largest one that is staffed. Laundry staff can ensure that the place is cleaner and safer. At the very least, they should be able to help if you run out of change or a machine has a problem. And having a large number of machines means you are less likely to ever have to wait for someone else to finish.

Solution 21: Do laundry at off times. Ask the staff at your laundry about their least busy times and try to schedule your laundry then. In general, early mornings and weekdays are the quietest times. 

I have too many dirty clothes piled up. It's overwhelming!

Solution 22: Wash the large items first. Sheets and towels take up a lot of space in the laundry pile and they are the easiest to fold. If you do them first, you feel like you've accomplished something, which makes the next load easier.

Solution 23: Go to a laundromat. When everything in the house is dirty, put it in big trash bags or laundry baskets, grab tons of empty hangers and your laundry detergent, load up the car and take it to a laundromat. This is a drastic measure, but it smoothes a number of friction points at once. Because laundromats have many machines and some for extra-large loads, you can do a lot of loads simultaneously, and finish washing and drying in record time. Laundromats also have nice big tables for folding and racks to hang things on. You get the satisfaction of getting all caught up on laundry, and then can work on using solution 27 to more-or-less keep up with it in the future.

Solution 24: Keep up with laundry so it doesn't become overwhelming or a marathon task.

Example routines to try:

  • Do one load whenever the laundry hamper is full.
  • Choose a day of the week that is always laundry day.
  • Do one load of laundry every day at a time that fits your schedule. For example, put a load in the wash before you leave for work in the morning; switch it to the dryer when you get home. Start preparing dinner while it's in the dryer; pull it out and fold/hang while dinner is cooking. Put clothes away after dinner.
  • Do laundry every x number of days. If once a week laundry requires more than a few loads, do it more often. Figure out how often you would need to do it to have a manageable number of loads to do at a time.
  • Set an alarm or use an app like Tody as a reminder.

I need more motivation.

Solution 25: Reward yourself when your laundry is complete. Every time you totally finish at least one load of laundry (including putting it away), give yourself a reward. If you completely empty your dirty laundry hampers and have done all the laundry, give yourself a bigger reward. Don't know how you might reward yourself? Here's a list to help generate some ideas.

Solution 26: Use products you like. If you use scented laundry detergent or softener, identify a favorite scent. You might try lavender to add a bit of relaxing aromatherapy to your laundry experience. Or you might choose a scent that reminds you of a person or place (original scent Downy smells like my Mom's laundry, for example). Washer pods appeal to my techie side (who thought of making that melting plastic stuff?). And dryer balls that reduce static and help reduce wrinkles come in all kinds of cute designs, in either wool or plastic. Mine look like hedgehogs.

Solution 27: Visualize the consequences of not doing laundry. Remember a time when your dirty laundry was totally out of control. Smell the funk of unwashed clothes. Imagine what it feels like to wade through piles of clothes on the floor. Remember how much you hate going to the laundromat. You don't want life to be like that, do you?

I just plain hate doing laundry and no amount of hacking is going to make it better.

Solution 28: Delegate or share the job. You might be able to get help from others in your household. In a family, each person can do their own laundry, including remarkably small children. You can also ask for help with individual tasks in the laundry process. Or offer to trade with someone a job that you hate less than they do - maybe you'll mow the lawn and they'll do the laundry?

Solution 29: Outsource it. You could take the path of college students the world over - -take your laundry home to your parents. The adult version of this is to spend money to get it done for you. Take your laundry to a drop-off service or hire someone to do it. 

Solution 30: The ultimate solution to most laundry problems

Have a minimalist wardrobe. At some point early in his life, my husband simplified his wardrobe down to two week's worth of clothes. It's actually a pretty genius way to streamline the whole laundry thing. The capsule wardrobe, means you have fewer items to deal with in every step of the laundry process. You are forced to do laundry more often (unless nudity or smelly clothes appeal to you). Moreover, it costs less money to purchase and maintain a minimalist wardrobe, you spend less time and energy taking care of it, and you avoid decision fatigue when you get dressed in the morning.

There you have it. Thirty totally doable strategies for making laundry easier. Laundry is still a challenge for me but I don't hate it as much now that I have eliminated my main barriers. Sure, I still procrastinate, as I do with a lot of maintenance tasks, but making each step of the process a little easier makes a world of difference.

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About the Creator

Marie Jones

I'm a writer, librarian, coach, and consultant.

Messy Desk Consulting

Check out my newly released book: The Messy Planner : The planning system that embraces inconsistency and randomness!

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