We have what many people would consider to be a large family. Seven people produces a whole lot of laundry, but we’ve come up with a few ways to not let laundry overtake our lives.
Here are 7 big family laundry hacks that can work for a family of any size!
1. Use the Quick Wash setting on your machine.
Unless you have the rare ultra-filthy load of clothes, you don’t need to do the longer cycles. This will cut the wash time probably in half (depending on your machine) and you’ll save on electricity.
2. Only wash full loads.
Not only does it save you money on water and energy, but it saves you time. Add towels or sheets to a less-than-full load if you desperately need to get a small number of items cleaned.
3. Make everyone wear their clothes more than once between washes, especially pajamas and I-wore-it-for-three-hours clothing.
Train your people to look at their clothing and smell it before throwing it in the dirty laundry. If an item is just stinky, try airing it out for awhile or try throwing it in the freezer. (The internet is filled with “you should freeze your jeans” and “freezing your jeans does nothing,” so take that piece of advice with a grain of salt.)
4. Cut your dryer sheets in half, reuse them, or skip them altogether.
My mother never used any sort of fabric softener devices so I don’t either. Our clothes feel just fine. Plus, fabric softeners decrease the absorbency of your towels. Obviously, living in a damp climate means that static cling isn’t much of a problem.
You could also use three wool dryer balls instead of dryer sheets. They are reusable and don’t make your clothes smell like chemicals.
5. Wash your clothing in cold as much as possible.
I only use hot water when there is some matter on clothing that causes me to gag or I’m washing my whites, otherwise it’s cold.
6. Wash each person’s clothing separately, but only when they have a full load (see Hack #2).
This saves you time sorting and keeps the piles-of-laundry-all-over-the-floor from taking over your living room for days on end. Wash, dry, fold, put away without interruption.
7. Skip the sorting unless an item is brand new and you’re concerned about bleeding.
I wash the children’s whites, darks, and colors together on cold and the world hasn’t stopped spinning.
Here’s my bonus tip — don’t buy your children white clothing.
I intentionally do not purchase white tops for people under 43 years old, period. Stains on colored shirts are harder to detect and now the only white items are underwear, undershirts (like the girls’ tank tops), and socks and I don’t care if they are less than bright white.
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As the mom of nine let me add that children can do their own laundry at a surprisingly young age
Loved the tip tips we are a family of 8 so laundry is the one thing in our lifes that can be chaotic. For every load I wash there are 2 more. I as well learned long ago nothing white except socks and underwear lol.
Good ideas. I have 3 boys all going through puberty right now, so washing on anything but hot is a definite no go. 😉
I switched to plastic dryer balls long ago.
Dryer sheets were re-asssigned to yellow jacket repellent duty in the car. (Post Office swears it works!)
What? How do you do this? Do they just sit in the car or do you have to use them as a wipe. I’m totally intrigued.
Put an original Bounce dryer sheet in your mailbox. It should keep the bees and wasps from making their nests in the mailbox. It does work, but there are some determined wasps that seem to ignore it on occasion. (I am a rural mail carrier, so I know what I’m talking about)
Someone told me a small handful of fresh lavender works, too. I haven’t seen 100% success on that one, but then, again, I used dried flowers. I do prefer the smell of the lavender, though!
I find it interesting that some mailboxes seem to attract the wasps EVERY YEAR and others never do…wonder what the secret is to that???
Oh my! We have 8 right now in our family. We just started to have everyone keep their own laundry in their rooms…but because we have three and three in each bedroom (boys and girls) having their own hampers would take up way too much space…so i bought 6 door hanging mesh and wire hampers…they hang flat on the door and have a wire rim that stays open to toss clothes into and the bottom unzips so we don’t have to take the basket down to empty it. Now my children eight and over do their own laundry, wash, dry put away… if they run out of pants its their fault…no longer my fault! Also like your hack I only now wash clothes according to where/who they belong to…I am NOT mixing them any more! The worst part is sorting folding hanging them and then going every which way putting them away and when you have your children do it and you “check their work” i just want to cry my eyes out for all my work being trashed! So no more! Also, I put a duffel bag type laundry bag in each closet (from the dollar tree) and that is they bag they put clothes they find aren’t fitting anymore…too short, too small and “i don’t ever where it and don’t like it” that way when it comes time to rotate clothes for the new season i will then sort out all clothes they can ware and fit again next season and put it into their saved bin, keep out the things that are multi-seasonal and still fit well, pull out the next season that we have stored away and get out what we need…make a list of what we still need (especially with the oldest boy and girl) and then take all the too smalls clothes and decide to either keep for the next kids below, or donate or trash it…. It is a huge chore… i hate all things laundry… i came from a big family and now i have my own…and am just now getting it a little more manageable…sort of… I love the mesh sock bag for each person… i might do that and clip it on their own door hamper bags…
Instead of using dryer sheets I will put the fabric softener during the last time the washer does its rinse so that way I don’t have to go back and re-add softener and do another third rinse my washer does two rinses so for the second rinse which is the last rinse I go ahead and add the fabric softener so that everything is just going to be done all in one and that way I don’t have to add dryer sheets to the dryer the dryer sheets and a fabric softener seem to come out to be like the same price
Each family member gets a drawstring net/mesh bag in their room for socks. When the socks are dirty, THEY put tgem into the bag.. when laundry is being done, pull the cord shut and wash & dry the whole bag. Ta-dah! No sorting tiny socks! Then put whole bag back in kids room and make them sort. 😀
Dryer sheets are gross for so many reasons!
I quit using them several years ago and instead add vinegar to the rinse cycle in the washer. NO residual smell and leave everything soft. (Some people like the apple vinegar, I just use white.)
In the dryer I add the dryer balls – they fluff everything and absorb the static!
I think the hacks are good maybe when kiddos are small. Once they start doing sports, activities, etc. those would be obsolete. Can’t even tell you how many activities/sports have required a white item – tights, shirt, pants, etc. The laundry monster becomes inevitable unfortunately & you end up back at square 1 – doing the best you can.
I used to have a nightmare time matching socks and my build up of unmatched socks kept getting bigger and bigger! I ended up hanging plastic grocery bags on the wall with everyone’s initial and I just throw the socks into them by size and everyone has to match their own by grabbing “their” bag when they need socks.
How about trying the “Woolzies” wool drying balls instead of fabric softener? They do the job (and reduces drying time) naturally 🙂
We are laundry hacking twins. Except you may have put a stop to the “I can wear my undies twice if I turn them inside out” tradition that seems to have found its way into my kids’ logic.
and dryer sheets coat the dryer drum and its internal parts, leaving a tacky residue.
if you use synthetic fiber clothing like acrylic, polyester and nylon, you are more likely to have static electricity. if you have mostly cotton, linen, wool, silk, ramie and rayon fiber clothing, you don’t really need dryer sheets. btw, dryer sheet and liquid fabric softener reduce the absorbency of your towels.
if you must use fabric softener, the cheap wayto do that would be to put a little of the liquid on a clean rag or face cloth andput that into the dyer with the clean, wet clothes.
I stopped using dryer sheets after I realized they left a coating on my towels/rags. Found this out the hard way when cleaning my mirrors and the rags kept leaving smear after smear- from the dryer sheet coating!!