5 Ways to Power Through Your Laundry

There’s no way around laundry. For one, you have to wear clothes every day. Perhaps you wear more than one outfit, too: for example, you could switch from your pajamas into your work clothes, then change into your sweats for a trip to the gym before returning home and once again slipping into a pair of PJs.

Clearly, your laundry can pile up fast — and this doesn’t even include the clothes accrued by your loved ones, your linens and anything else that might need a wash.

This means that laundry can quickly turn into a time-consuming household chore. Rather than waste your evenings or weekends sorting, washing, drying and folding, adopt one or more of the following hacks that’ll make laundry day come and go faster than you can say “detergent.” Now, get on with the rest of your life.

1. Pre-Treat your Stains

It’s inevitable: a sip of red wine or bite of a mustard-laden hotdog goes awry, and you’ve got a giant stain on your shirt. Rather than wash it over and over until you remove the stain, apply a pre-treatment or stain stick as soon as you can and let the article of clothing sit for several days. This quick move can save you hours of soaking, scrubbing, and re-washing, and, clearly, it’s pretty easy, too.

2. Sort your Clothes as you Go

One big hamper is great for holding your laundry and keeping your room clean, sure, but it also makes it a laborious task to sort your clothes when it’s time to clean them. If you purchase a laundry hamper with compartments that separate your lights from darks, you’ll be able to sort as you accrue laundry. When it’s time to wash, you can grab your pile from the hamper and throw it right into the machine without thinking twice: you’ve already done the sorting, haven’t you?

3. Buy Laundry Detergent in Pods

Rather than spend time making sure that you’ve poured or scooped just the right amount of detergent to wash your clothes, purchase your laundry detergent in pre-measured pods. These sometimes even incorporate fabric softener, too, and release all of their cleaning and softening power at just the right moment in your machine’s cycle. You can toss it in with your clothes and voila. You’re ready to start washing.

4. Say Goodbye to your Socks

Does your washing machine or dryer seem to have an appetite for socks? You probably finish every few wash-and-dry cycles realizing that you’ve lost half of a pair. This can be a bother if you purchase crazily patterned or color socks that go with only one other mate.

To solve this problem, do a complete overhaul of your sock drawer. Purchase socks in plain colors — black, white, tan, etc. — that all look identical. That way, when you wash them, you won’t have to waste time pairing them up with their other half. You can simply throw all of your socks together and then place the entire lot back into your drawer. Once you start running low, buy a new set and save yourself the effort of pairing socks and ditching the orphaned ones.

5. Be Liberal with the Spin Cycle

Some washing machines, especially old-school top loaders, leave your clothes pretty soaked after a cycle. If you want to hasten drying time for your pants, tanks and tees, set your machine to perform an extra spin cycle at the end of each wash. This will remove as much water as is possible so that your clothes dry more quickly; no need to run your dryer two, or three or four more times.

Image by JayMantri