Laundry & Ironing Tips

I don't know about you, but laundry (and ironing) is my least favorite chore to do. I would rather do any other chore than laundry. Just thinking about it makes me want to run away. So, in order to give myself the push I need to get it done (and in a timely manner) I changed the way I do laundry. If you are a pro at laundry then this post is not for you...

1. Sort your clothes by owners, not color. Sounds crazy, I know. But here are the ways I divide my laundry when it goes in the washer, cutting down on the trips I take to each room; Dad, mom, baby girl, baby boy, linens, whites. Yes, whites still get their own category. By separating the loads by person you make one trip with each load and you're done.
2. Fold each load by drawer/closet ownership. For example, baby girl's clothes get sorted into shirts, bottoms, pajamas, socks/bloomers, and dresses as I fold them. All the shirts in one drawer, bottoms in another, pajamas have their own, then socks/bloomers in a box (a cute one I made), and dresses are hung. This eliminates standing in a room trying to sort the clothes that have already been folded.
3. Have hangers in your laundry area. I also despise ironing. I'm not super great at it and it is very time consuming. So, if you have hangers ready for your dress shirts/pants as they come out of the dryer they will wrinkle much less, nearly eliminating the need for ironing (depends on the fabric of the shirt/pant, really). Or if you have shirts that aren't dryer friendly, they can dry nicely on a hanger.
4. Don't let your clothes sit in the dryer. Warm clothes are so impressionable. If you get them taken care of right away (easier said than done) you will have less-wrinkled clothes. If they cool off you will have wrinkly clothes that require more work. Bleh. Use the dryer signal so that you know when they're done.
5. Use Steam. If you forget to get your clothes out of the dryer right away, then turning the dryer back on won't take out the wrinkles. You have to add a clean, damp something (rag, shirt, towel) to create steam to get the wrinkles back out of the clothes. This is SO helpful when you realize your husband is about to get dressed and his shirts sat in the dryer overnight...oops. If you still can't get out the wrinkles, then bust out the iron and use the 'steam' feature on the iron as well.

I'm telling you, these five things make laundry (and ironing) much easier. I'm the girl that irons wrinkles into shirts, so these all help me *almost* avoid ironing completely. Preventing wrinkles helps prevent ironing, but if you must iron, iron patiently.