Organizing Your Laundry Room

Providing clean laundry for yourself and your family is no longer the tedious, laborious task of the past. And it’s a good thing … most of us don’t have a handy stream running through our property and don’t have a clue about pounding, rubbing and scrubbing the daylights – and dirt – out of our clothes! Until the day that disposable clothing, linens and such become affordable and easy to obtain, our homes will still have laundry rooms, clothes chutes, hampers and expensive appliances to make the job easier.

Sorting

Organizing your laundry room and keeping it that way actually reduces the time you must spend on doing the laundry. Assuming you have a large family, piles of dirty clothes are probably a way of life at your house. Sorting through them is a monumental task unless you enlist the cooperation of the rest of the family. If they are old enough, teach them to sort their clothing according to fabric, color, and manufacturer’s recommended washing instructions.

There are a number of things on the market that make it easier to keep your laundry organized and sorted. Using colored plastic baskets in a child’s room encourages them to keep soiled clothing off the floor by tossing underwear, socks, light colored clothes into the white basket, blue jeans, denims, colored shirts and T’s into the blue basket, etc. Follow the same coordination in the laundry room perhaps adding a yellow basket for linens, and another color for towels.

On laundry day, it’s easy to gather the contents from the same color of baskets and do a quick, final sort as you toss them into the tub of the automatic washer. Always follow the manufacturer’s recommended method for cleaning the fabric.

How To Organize

If laundry is not one of your favorite ways to spend time, use a little thought in how you might streamline and make the process more efficient. Take a good look at your laundry room – is it small? Sometimes, there may be no room left for anything except improvements!

• Install a rod for hanging clothes above your washer and dryer; you may also install a shelf with the rod connected underneath the shelf.
• Install a retractable clothes line for hanging delicate items.
• Install a “drop down” ironing board that is fastened on the wall and can be returned to an upright position.
• Use laundry baskets, hampers or other storage systems for sorting clothes.
• Be sure there is good light in the laundry room.
• Be creative with adding surface space for sorting and folding .
• Keep a small trash can handy for disposing of lint from the dryer and wrappers from pockets, etc.
• Keep a basket for lonely socks, loose change and odds & ends.
• Keep laundry soaps, additives and other cleaning supplies either in cabinets or on shelves, out of reach of children.

If your laundry room is not on the same floor as the bedrooms, think about installing a laundry chute from the bedroom closet to the laundry room. That saves steps and keeps your bathroom and closet clutter free. Remind your family not to climb into bed at night unless all laundry items are picked up and put in their proper storage container.

The best advice for making laundry day as painless as possible, is to begin and end with sorting and organization. Sort and wash like items together. Then hang or fold them until they are ironed and put away.

Dry Cleaning

Take care when wearing garments that require dry cleaning; you may be able to wear them a few times before they need cleaned. Take them off as soon as returning home and hang them on a clothes hanger. Examine for tiny stains that you might be able to blot away. Brush them by hand and then store in your closet or on a rod in your laundry room. When you’ve worn them a few times and they no longer look or smell fresh, put them together in a plastic bag or tote until you have accumulated enough to take for professional cleaning.

Hanging Rods

If you don’t have room for a folding clothes rack, consider installing a hanging rod above the washer and dryer, leaving the appropriate amount of clearance for opening the lids. Immediately, when clothes are removed from the dryer, hang the blouse or shirt on a hanger, then place it on the rod. Fold flat articles that need ironed and sort according to category. Put them into a basket until you are ready to iron them, or return them to the owner’s room. Immediately after folding, put towels, washcloths and dishtowels back where they belong.

The rod above the washer and dryer is also a great place to hang delicate items right from the washer – things you don’t want to put through the dryer cycle. Some garments, such as brassieres, camisoles, washable sweaters, etc., should not be dried using a heated cycle – it deteriorates the elasticizing in delicates and may cause wrinkles and static cling in sweaters.

Put a small basket on top of your dryer. Use it for socks that have lost their mates; when the other shows up, it’s mate is waiting. Marry them and put them away.

Keep It Clean

Keep your laundry room clean and orderly. If it’s a small room, keep the surfaces of your washer and dryer de-cluttered; then they are available for sorting and organizing your laundry. If you have a laundry tub, you can cover it with a square of plywood and use it as an extra surface. Measure the surface area of the sink; most home improvement stores are happy to cut a piece of plywood to your specifications. Have it cut about 3 inches deeper and wider than the actual size of the sink. Then use a semi-gloss paint and paint the wood. After it dries thoroughly, put it on top of the sink. Works great for sorting and organizing in the laundry room.

Additional Tips

Most of us are familiar with the materials and clothing that are frequently washed. If you get into the habit of pre-sorting the laundry, you won’t need to spend a whole lot of time thinking about it. Always look for the manufacturer’s instructions and follow them. If items are new and are a vibrant color, wash them separately as they may “bleed” and transfer color to other articles. Most towels, bath and kitchen towels, can be laundered together. Sheets, pillowcases and table cloths may also be washed in the same load.

Fabric softeners are great for reducing and eliminating static cling, and freshening the fabrics. Don’t, however, use on kitchen towels, washcloths, bath towels, or cleaning cloths; fabric softeners greatly reduce absorbent qualities.

Be careful when adding chlorine bleach to your wash load. When using chlorine bleach, add it to the water right away, then allow the washer to fill before adding clothes. Chlorine bleach needs to be diluted or it can greatly damage clothing by weakening the fabric and actually eating holes in it. There are special products made for brightening colored clothes; they do not contain chlorine bleach.

Make Your List and Check It Twice

Before going to the grocery store, check your supplies of clothes washing detergent, fabric softener, anti-static dryer sheets, etc., whatever you use for your regular laundry chores. Keep the products that you use frequently in good supply. It’s maddening to run out of your favorite bleaching detergent when you want to get all the linens washed at the same time, or use the last drop of laundry softener when you still have a load of dirty t-shirts! You either get side tracked by making a trip to the store or you have to save the rest for another day.