TIPical Mary Ellen host Mary Ellen Pinkham demonstrates how to create a laundry system in your home.
- Shake out clothes before placing them in the dryer to allow air to circulate through the garment.
- If you're having a house built or remodeled, consider putting the washer and dryer on the main level or upstairs, where it is more convenient, rather than in the basement. If the laundry room can't be placed on the main level, consider installing a laundry chute.
- Have an area for clothes to hang, such as knit delicates that are completing the drying process or cotton shirts waiting to be ironed. Install an additional rod across the middle of the tub, or buy a hotel clothesline made to hang clothes on. You could even use the shower head as a hook to place hangers on. To solve an unsightly jumble of hangers and clothes, close the shower curtain to hide the mess.
- Make a permanent space for an ironing board and iron. To conserve space, attach the ironing board to the back of the door, so it flips down for you to iron, then back up when you're finished.
- Hang a bulletin board next to the ironing area in the laundry room. Keep special care instructions and threaded needles, one with black thread and one with white thread. Poke the needles into the cork for quick fix-ups while ironing.
- Install shelves above the machines to hold laundry supplies.
- Begin to gather the laundry. To simplify, have small bins, perhaps a different color for each person, rather than one hamper for the entire family. Small bins are good to have to prevent from overloading with clothes that are not dirty. Have each person at the end of the week bring their bin to the laundry room for washing.
- Have children label socks with a fabric marker, or use plastic rings, such as the safety ring that is leftover from milk jugs, to hold each pair together. Also, label T-shirts and other items with their name if there are multiple children wearing similar styles and sizes.
- Don't wash things that are already clean. Time is wasted and clothes wear out from unnecessary washings. Many things end up in the washing machine because it's easier to crumple up clothes and throw them into the hamper than to neatly put them away. Discourage throwing clean clothes into the laundry by subtracting money from the children's new clothes fund for each clean item found in the dirty laundry.
- Have family members come to collect their respective bins after the laundry has been completed.
- Have the children fold and put away their own clothes into their rooms, and if the children are old enough, have them iron their own clothes.
