“Make sure clothes and shoes are visibly stored. This may mean editing, or installing a closet system – I love my California Closets closet! – so you can see what you have. When your closet is organized and your checkbook is balanced, you can rule the world!”.
A big part of displaying your clothes is having them clean. How many times do you “have nothing to wear” simply because you haven’t done laundry in a week or two? Or how many times have you gotten home from a shopping trip to try on your new clothes with your old ones and half of your closet is at the cleaners or in the dirty clothes hamper? Ugh! I don’t like doing laundry, but I really don’t like it when dirty laundry gets in my way.
So here are some tips for washing clothes faster and more efficiently, as well as some ways to remind yourself to pick up the laundry from the cleaners.
Wash Clothes Faster and more Efficiently
Have a Plan
Are you going to wash clothes once a week clothes washing or wash a load everyday? Pick your plan of attack and stick with it. The less clothing you have to wash the better off you are washing clothes once a week because you will have larger loads, meaning you will be able to wash more for your time. Gather all of your materials (Coat hangers, Sweater Drying Rack, Dirty Clothes: strip bed(s), gather dirty towels, empty hampers).
Typically clothes take longer to dry than to wash. Therefore, use a timer to avoid the risk of leaving clothes in the washer and forgetting about them (if you are doing just two loads at a time). Wash load, switch load to dry, set timer for 30 minutes, when timer goes off, wash another load, set timer for 15 minutes, when timer goes off – fold the clothes, switch load to dry.
Plan something to do while the clothes wash: tidy the laundry room or adjacent rooms. Listen to music or podcasts while folding clothes.
Help others that live with you avoid ruining your clothing- Post a list (like this one) of clothing that is Dry Clean Only or must be line dried. Act like the list is a reminder for yourself so as not to come across as the anal control-freak.
- Designate a convenient spot for the dry cleaning: a shopping bag or box works well. If dry cleaning never makes it to the dirty clothes hamper, then it is less likely to end up in the washing machine.
- Don’t forget that accidents happen.
Professionally Fold Your Clothes
Watch this hilarious, yet helpful video on how to professionally fold clothes. If you need more instruction on the Japanese folding, try this video; it’s actually in Japanese! And if you are totally anal like myself, you can learn how to make that cool cardboard folding ‘machine’ by watching this video
How to Remind Yourself to pick up the Dry Cleaning- Leave a voice mail for yourself on home or work phone as you are dropping off dry cleaning
- When you get the voice mail either make a cell phone reminder or make a note to enter cell phone reminder
- You can setup a reminder on your cell phone or you can use a reminder system, like the one provided by BackPack. Here’s how to make a cell phone reminder:
- go to backpackit.com & login
- go to the Reminders tab
- enter “Pick up Dry Cleaning” in the field provided
- Enter a time—estimate when you will be going past your cleaners.
- Go to settings. Check Have reminders and calendar notifications via... cell phone.
- Enter your number and service provider.
- You will receive a text message with the text you entered at the time you specified.
I’m sure many of you have some great laundry tips. Please share! Happy Washing.