When the weather is warm, the last thing you want to be doing is laundry, right? Like the rest of us, you would most likely rather be outside enjoying the sunshine and spending time with your family.
While laundry is a necessity, a simple laundry routine can help you keep it from becoming a long, drawn-out process or something that takes up time every day.
Instead, it will allow you to build a system that works for both you and your family.
Simplify Summer Laundry
Laundry can be a hassle, but it doesn’t have to be with these simple tips. Follow these steps, and you’ll be able to breeze through your laundry this summer!
Make Sorting Easier
Sorting laundry to keep your clothes looking better can take extra time on laundry day and can overcomplicate things if your kids are helping and aren’t sure how to sort properly.
To simplify your sorting routine, use a four-part sorting hamper. This allows you to sort your clothes as you change them, making things far easier for you on laundry day.
Pack Up Cold Weather Clothing
As you wash your summer laundry, be sure to remove anything that is out of season so you can pack them up to put away.
If they’re clean, you can go ahead and pack them up but do not put them away until you have washed anything that may be lingering in the dirty hampers.
This may seem like it will be extra work, and it may be at first, but over the course of the first week’s laundry, you will be saving yourself extra work later on.
Get Rid of Clothes That No Longer Fit
Another way to slim down the amount of clothing you are needing to wash in the summer is by getting rid of clothing, especially kid’s clothing, that is torn or ripped, stained, or no longer fits.
You should also abide by the six-month rule here when going through closets to make things easier for yourself. If it has not been worn in six months or more, it is probably time to get rid of it.
Choose Your Least Busiest Day
Summer vacations can be hectic when it comes to your schedule. Some kids have daily activities like sports, while others do week-long summer camps.
Either way, their schedules can really impact your cleaning schedules at times. To help simplify that, choose your least busy day as laundry day.
If you attempt to wash laundry on a day that is already hectic, you will be putting unnecessary stress on yourself while you attempt to keep everyone in clean clothes and manage everything else on your schedule. A daily planner is a great option to help figure out your best day.
Wash When It Is Cooler
It is easy for laundry to pile up during the warmer months to become a mountain of dirty clothes.
One of the reasons for this is the heat and how easily the dryer can warm your home up. This makes laundry seem like a bigger chore, but it can also cost you more in cooling costs and power costs.
A very easy way to prevent this from happening and keep things simple is to wash your laundry when the outside temperature is cooler. With cooler temperatures, your air conditioning will not have to work as hard to cool your home, and you won’t be frustrated by the fact that your home is warmer than you would like.
Dry on a Clothesline
Your dryer only complicates things in the summer. As mentioned above, it only serves to make your air conditioning work harder, making you uncomfortably warm and raising your power bill.
A quick and very simple way to prevent this from happening is just to use a clothesline to dry your clothes. If you do not have the space to do an outdoor clothesline, a portable clothes drying rack will work just as well.
Fold Each Load Before Starting a New One
One thing that causes laundry to pile up is washing and drying a bunch of loads all at once without putting the previous loads away.
Do that too many times, and you will end up with a mountain of clean clothes that take hours to fold, hang and put away.
Instead of allowing this to happen, put each load away as it comes off the clothesline or out of the dryer. It is not any extra work since you have to do it anyhow, but it will save you from getting stuck in an hours-long folding session.
Summer laundry does not have to be a hassle that warms your home up, takes time away from being outside, and overwhelms you. With enough preparation for the summer months, you can easily make it a quick chore that fits your daily life.
By setting up a schedule and changing how you look at the chore of laundry, you can really simplify your summer laundry routine into a smooth, manageable process.
