My husband Ken, works as an insurance agent and in that line of work he needs to wear dress clothes. When we were first married I spent a fair amount of time each week carefully ironing all his dress shirts and pants until he shared the secret (which I am sure many of you know) with me of pulling them right out of the dryer as soon as it is done and carefully hanging them up. It has been so nice to greatly reduce my ironing time (I only iron something around once a month now) especially as my life has gotten busier. This method does not work with all fabrics. Somethings just require ironing no matter what. SO we have gotten quite picky about what we buy. For Ken's shirts we only get ones that say "Wrinkle Free". "Wrinkle free" does not mean that they never wrinkle but it does mean that if you pull them straight out of the dryer as soon as it is done drying that it will not be wrinkled. This method certainly
works for me!
I also thought I would share some other laundry tips that work for me (They may or may not work for you in your situation).
- Do all the Laundry in jut two days of the week. I like this because I can haul everything to the laundry room, sort it all out and then just work as fast as I can to get everything done. In the summer when I try to hang a lot on the line I will do heavy items first so that they can have the longest drying time (In Northern MN it takes quite a while to dry clothes, unlike my experience in Kansas and Nevada). This system for doing all the laundry in a big batch is actually not recommended for the septic system but it still works for me.
- Re-wear clothes. This is something that our whole family does. If something that you have worn is not really dirty, then wear it again another day. We also use our towels for more than a day (you are clean when you use them, so they don't really get dirty). Both of these methods save you time (in doing the laundry), Money (in detergent cost and water if you live in town) and are better for the enviroment.
- Re-use dryer sheets. This is a very small item but I like noticing the small things too. Dryer sheets usually work for at least 2 loads of clothes. So now the box lasts twice as long. This also saves money and is better for the enviroment.
- Use aprons. I wear an apron some when cooking but this is mostly for the kids. Mara recently got to quit wearing an apron at meals but the other 3 still do. I have made them big aprons that cover well and do not look like a baby's bib. This has saved us a lot of laundry as they are not always getting their clothes dirty at meals. Much of the time we re-use the aprons many times.
- Hang up wet items to dry before placing them in the hamper. There have been times that I have not done that and I have found favorite items with mold stains on them (this seemed to happen most with Mara's baby clothes). I think I have finally learned my lesson.
- Treat spots before they go in the washer. My favorite spot treater is ZOTE soap. My friend Evie -who keeps her kid's clothes immaculate- shared this soap with me. It works very well. The white bar is for white clothes and the pink one for colored. A bar lasts forever so it is very economical.
Those are the laundry tips that I can think of that
work for me. Do you have any to share?
