Day 2 of Blog Every Day in May Challenge - provide an educational post about something I am good at.
Heaven help us - I'm going to tell you my laundry tips. These tips have been hard won over the last 2 decades at least, so don't discount them. I have no time for unrealistic BS, so that should tell you I will not be wasting your time with any fluff and fold nonsense.
Heaven help us - I'm going to tell you my laundry tips. These tips have been hard won over the last 2 decades at least, so don't discount them. I have no time for unrealistic BS, so that should tell you I will not be wasting your time with any fluff and fold nonsense.
- Wash every day. Laundry is like the ocean, you cannot turn your back on it or before you know it, you will have a pile of laundry taller than yourself and the rain will set in. Nobody wants dirty laundry stinking up the place. Get on it. Also, don't spend a fortune on washing powder, the only difference is the expensive one has higher advertising and packaging costs, so they need to charge more.
- Many people do the light/dark soak, and I used to be one of them. I also used to do warm, gentle cycles and maybe that might be good for nice clothes if you have an office job and are trying to save on dry cleaning bills. But for regular clothes that are not woolen there is no point in a warm wash. You will just increase your power bill and squander the world's resources for no good reason. Please note woolen clothes do require a warm gentle wash cycle: try not to own any.
- A proper sort for me is - towels separately, everything else can go in together. If you have a persistent bed wetter (pray for me) you might like to wash doonas, quilts and bed liners separately. After a while doing this I just lost heart and stuffed it all in together in a cold regular wash cycle like a depressed zombie. And it was all good! So I do the depressed zombie washerwoman shuffle every day now. (pray for me some more)
- Hang things on the line straight away, if you leave them they will go mouldy especially if you live in a subtropical climate. I don't use the dryer because A it doesn't work and B I don't want to pay the power bills. Also C I live in the land of the Hills Hoist clothesline and it's patriotic. Unless it's the rainy season, and then the whole downstairs area looks like a Chinese laundry..
- Try not to get OCD about having matching pegs for each item of clothing. What, just me? OK, moving right along..I like to hang undies and anything else I would rather the neighbours didn't see in the center of the clothesline, so that they will be hidden by larger and more socially acceptable clothes. I like to alternate rows of shorts and jeans with rows of shirts and sheets, so that they all get a good chance at drying. I like a row of shirts to share pegs rather than have 2 pegs each, because I can only carry so many pegs at a time and I can get the clothes on the line faster if I can carry less pegs. I do hope this isn't confusing. Sidebar: get smaller pegs.
- I have no qualms at leaving clothes overnight, as long as it doesn't rain. I like the spiritual essence of the moon to bathe the clothes and give them extra luck, unless you live near a colony of fruit bats, in which case you DO NOT want to do this, because bat poo is the most hideous thing in the universe.
- Fold the clothes as they come off the line. I cannot emphasize this enough. I didn't do this for years and we lived with a constant pile of laundry in the lounge room waiting (in vain) to be folded. If you needed anything you had to go through the pile, and until about 5 years ago every family snapshot had a pile of laundry in the background. It was like an extra relative that no one liked. Seriously just do it, it will change your life.
- Extra GENIUS folding tip - take them off the line and fold them by family member, stacking them in the laundry basket by family member as you go. So when you get inside, the clothes are already folded and sorted into family member piles, leaving you to put each family members clothes on the end of their bed so they can put it away themselves. This Here is the pay off for folding as you take clothes off the line - putting the clothes on the ends of beds will take minutes.
- It's important for children to learn life skills, the least of which is putting their own clothes away. Try not to look in the wardrobes too much, or you might turn into a shouty mum that drinks too much wine. The exception to this rule is your husband - you need to put his clothes away because he never will, and no one wants to feel like they are living in a charity clothing bin.
- Ironing? I don't do it ever. EVER. Mostly I try not to own clothes that need ironing, and if I think a shirt or similar might need ironing I hang it out to dry on a hanger and then put it away dry on the same hanger. If someone in the household wants something ironed, they get to iron it themselves. Hooray for life skills!
Ahem.
