7 ways to learn to love doing the laundry

Doing the laundry is another one of those chores that we need to do. Same as cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, making beds etc. Unless we learn to love some of these mundane chores we have to do, we’re always going to hate doing them and it becomes more of a burden. Here are 7 ways to learn to love doing the laundry.

Be grateful and love the laundry

I can’t stress this enough. Focusing on being grateful for what we do have in our lives has been scientifically proven to have a positive effect on our lives.

Be grateful that you do have clothes to wear and wash.

Be grateful that you have running water to wash your clothes.

Be grateful that you have electricity to run your washing machine.

Be grateful that you have a washing machine. Many women before us had to wash clothes by hand and no running water.

Be grateful that you have children whose clothes need washing. Sometimes being able to fall pregnant and give birth to a child is a privilege denied to many.

Be grateful that you have natural resources like sunshine and wind to naturally dry your laundry.

So many more examples but this is just an idea. (We practice daily gratitude in the Domestic Goddesses in Training Facebook group by being grateful for at least one thing everyday. Are you a member? Join here.)

Once you look at doing the laundry (and other chores for that matter) with gratitude for what you do have, you’ll soon see it’s not that much of a chore after all.

Are you doing too much laundry?

When I was a child back in the 1960s and 1970s, we wore one set of clothes after school for the whole week. (Unless it was covered in mud which happened a fair bit.)

Other than our school uniforms, my mother didn’t have a lot of clothes to wash. She was fastidious with her laundry and always seemed to be washing but she never grumbled. She never had an automatic washing machine either.

My mother swore by the twin tub washing machine and had one up until she passed away in 2012. My grandmother swore by the old wringer style washing machine up until she passed away in her 90s back in 1999.

Save time on doing the laundry by doing less. Wear your clothes more than once. Get the children out of their school clothes straight after school so they’re still clean to wear another day and get them into the routine of wearing one set of play clothes after school.

Take pride in your clothes and linen

We’ve become such a throw away society. As soon as something wears or breaks, we are quick to throw it away and get a new one.

Washing your clothes less actually keeps them in better condition. Mend and repair any holes, frayed hems or lost buttons etc.

Wash woolens in special wool only detergent and lay flat to dry.

Hand wash any delicate items or wash on a delicate cycle.

Hang clothes on clothes hangers to dry to reduce ironing. I hang all of the adult tshirts, dresses, jumpers etc on hangers so they get packed away into the closet straight away after being dried. Same applies to the school uniforms. No ironing either.

Treat stains as soon as they appear. Remember the better you clean your laundry, the longer it will last. Having a sense of pride in your clothes and linen might encourage you to love doing it more.

Love the smell of clean laundry

I don’t know about you but I just love the smell of clean laundry. Not the strong smell of chemically enhanced laundry powders and liquids but the smell of sun dried washing. (I use a homebrand laundry powder that doesn’t have any smell.)

When it smells nice you look forward to folding it and packing it away and wearing it, nice and clean.

It doesn’t really take long

When you think about it, laundry doesn’t take that long.

What I love about it is that you put the washing machine on and walk away. A typical cycle on my washing machine takes 56 minutes. I can do so much in that time.

I can relax, do other chores, work in my business, watch TV or go out. I can even put it on at night and hang it out first thing in the morning.

How long does it take you to hang it out? Me? Realistically about 10 to 15 minutes depending on the size of the load. That’s not too much time out of your day. Even quicker if you use the clothes dryer.

Folding and packing away is part of the process

I like to look at doing the laundry from the moment it goes into the washing machine until the moment it’s folded and packed away.

That’s why I try and do the laundry on just one day. I know that’s different for people with big families (and babies or toddlers who have more dirty clothes) but I look at devoting just one day out of my week for the whole process.

I don’t plan too much else on my laundry days because I know I want it folded and packed away on the same day.

It can be hard to look at that big basket of laundry to be folded but again, realistically how long does it take to fold and pack away? For me, again 10 to 15 minutes.

My teenagers are getting better at doing their own. I put their things in a basket to fold and pack away on their own or sometimes I just get stuck in and do it.

Learn to love doing the laundry

Often the time we think it’s going to take us to do mundane chores like the laundry is longer than it actually does take to do it.

Don’t look at laundry with disdain. Look at it as just another important part of living and looking after yourself and your family. Clean clothes worn with pride makes you feel great as does having fresh sheets on the bed and clean, fluffy towels ready to dry yourself out of the shower.

Give yourself credit for a job well done!

How to Organise your Laundry Space

Whether your laundry is confined to a small cupboard or you’re lucky enough to have a whole room devoted to cleaning clothes, the laundry space is a focal point to every home.

 

Although it’s not exactly a hub for social activity, it’s a super practical area vital to your everyday needs. No matter how difficult the task you’re tackling, whether it be washing all your clothes from a recent holiday or figuring out how to get tomato sauce out of clothes, having a well-designed laundry space makes everything easier. To help you make the most of your laundry space, I’ve put together some of my favourite tips for organizing this space.

Wash Baskets

If you find yourself spending too much time rifling through your washing to separate the colours, whites and delicates, there is a way you can save yourself a lot of time. Simply have a few smaller washing baskets, labelled with the type of clothing, and have everyone in your home pop their dirty clothes in the right basket. When it comes to washing, you just have to grab the basket, set the machine and you’re good to go.

Glass Jars

If you want to add a little bit of luxury to your laundry space, invest in some glass jar containers. You could pick some old-school mason-style jars for a vintage vibe or cute, decorated jars for something a little quirkier. Use these jars to store your washing detergent and capsules. It looks so much nicer than a load of plastic and cardboard lying around.

Drying Pole

Install a pole between two cupboards or suspend from the ceiling so that you can hang items up to air-dry neatly. I love the look of real wooden poles, especially when paired with wooden cupboards, though you can go for whatever material you prefer. Buy a selection of matching, quality hangers for a finishing touch.

Countertop

If you don’t have a counter over your washing and drying machines, you should definitely think about getting one. It’s a super simple way to make your laundry space look neater and well-designed, and it maximizes your storage potential. You can put little baskets on your countertop or a cute tray for your glass jars – maybe even a small plant to brighten the room. It’s also a great area to fold clothes and organise on, making doing the laundry much easier.

Labels, Labels, Labels

There’s nothing I love more in a laundry space than when everything is properly labelled. Whether it’s baskets, jars, tins or whatever storage you’re using, popping on some cute labels makes it so much easier and quicker to find what you’re looking for. Doing your laundry will be much simpler!

 

You’ll find you actually enjoy doing laundry when your laundry space is organised properly. Hopefully you can take inspiration from my little tips and tricks to create a space you love.

 

7 tips to decorate the Laundry Room

While kitchens are often the warm, snug, heart of a home and the humble bathroom has become our private spa, laundry rooms have tended to remain purely functional and not necessarily very well-loved places.  It doesn’t have to be like that, though. Laundry might never be your idea of a good time, but you can make it more fun (or less bad) with a well-decorated and well-thought out laundry room.  Here are 7 tips to decorate the laundry room which is both functional and attractive.

 

Use barn doors to reduce noise while saving space

DIY Sliding Barn Door

Barn doors or sliding doors can be fitted into many spaces because they don’t need to swing open and closed.  From a practical perspective, they help to reduce the noise of doing laundry. From a decorative perspective, they provide an extra surface with which you can have some fun.  

For example, you could give them a coating of chalk-board paint, which gives grown-ups a message board and children a place to draw. If your budget is too tight for this, or you really can’t fit them in, then consider using a curtain, which won’t be quite as good but can be a lot better than nothing, plus you can sew pockets in it for extra storage.  If you can’t work out how to fit a curtain rod into your space, then see if you can use a tension rod.

Make the most of your floor

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Laundry room floors need to be robust and durable, but that doesn’t mean they need to be boring.  Use something sensible as a base, such as vinyl or tiles, and then put something easily washable on top of that for interest.

Obviously, the laundry room is not the place for your finest antique Persian rugs, but these days there are plenty of hard-wearing, washable rugs available at very affordable prices.  

Have at least some bright, bold color

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Most laundry appliances are white, a few come in silver or black.  There’s a very good reason for this, good-quality appliances are expected to last for years and to fit in with all kinds of home décor changes.  At the same time, if everything in a space is white (or silver or black); it can wind up looking cold, clinical and basically very uninviting. Because of this, the laundry room is one room where you usually want to make a point of using at least some bright, bold color where you can.

Use adhesive “tiles” for affordable and simple updates

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Real tiling is expensive and usually unnecessary in a laundry room, unless you actually have a laundry sink.  Even if you do, then you can save yourself money and increase your options for making changes later, by using plain white tiling behind the sink and putting the adhesive tiles over it.

Give preference to open storage

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Unless you have a really big laundry room, open storage is the way to go because it eliminates the need to allow space for cabinet doors to open and close.  Even if you do have a larger laundry space, open storage is generally still the best option.

Basically, in a laundry room it’s usually fairly easy to hide unsightly items in attractive containers, which takes away the main advantage of closed storage.  The big advantages of open storage, however, still remain, namely that it keeps items easy to hand and that you can make the shelves do double duty for storage and decoration. Also, open storage will allow you to see the wall behind the shelves, which can be useful for adding color.

Mix and match your storage pieces to create interest

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Pinterest is full of pictures of laundry rooms where everything matches perfectly with everything else and white appliances sit below white countertops with white cabinets and/or white open shelves filled with white storage baskets.  

These can make for great, styled photographs, but it’s a look which isn’t likely to work well in real life for most people, particularly not people with children and/or pets. On the other hand, randomly picking storage and décor items can quickly make a space look fussy and cluttered and hence somewhere you don’t want to be.  

The solution here is to pick a theme and run with that, it doesn’t matter what it is as long as it’s consistent. For example, you could have different colors and shapes of wicker baskets, as long as they’re unified by a common material or you could choose one or two colors and ring in the changes with different textures.

Create a small “pamper station”

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Depending on the space available, this can be anything from a small jar to a standard tray.  The key point it that it’s a place to hold little treats for yourself to make doing laundry more appealing.  

Keep small glass jars for loose change found in the laundry, sweets, hand cream, oil diffuser etc.  Add a plant or faux flowers to the tray. You can also include a tray with all your base materials and tools for removing those hard to remove stains.

 

11 DIY Laundry Hampers

You know you can make your own DIY laundry hamper? Doing the laundry isn’t such a bad job for me. I don’t actually mind it. What I don’t really like is having to pick the dirty laundry up from the kid’s bedroom floors. I’d love for them to have their own laundry hampers in their room (not that I think that would make much of a difference) but hampers are expensive for what they are. Here are 11 DIY laundry hamper ideas.

 

Laundry Hampers aren’t cheap

 

As you can see above, even at the discount stores, laundry hampers are pretty expensive for what they are. If you have some basic materials around your home, even if it’s just a pillow case until you can afford a nicer one, the following DIY laundry hampers might help you out. At least this way, you can customise the hamper to match your bathroom decor.

DIY your own laundry hamper

DIY Wire Laundry Basket

Handwoven Flax Laundry Basket

DIY Rope Basket

Simple Canvas Laundry Sorting Sacks

DIY Fabric Basket

 

DIY Industrial Style Hamper

DIY Laundry Tote

DIY Build & Sew Hamper with Reversible Insert

Heavy Duty Canvas Laundry Hamper

Simple Pillow Case on Embroidery Hoop

DIY PVC Pipe & Fabric Laundry Hamper