Guest Post - A Lazy Persons Laundry Hacks

What do cleaning, tidying, washing up and laundry all have in common? They’re all household chores which never seem to be finished. It doesn’t matter how much time and energy you put into them, there’s still a basket full of laundry, a couple of bits of washing up left to do. And all the while there are just about a million more interesting things to do! Laundry is a job which seemingly never ends and can really stress you out. So what are us lazy people to do?

We want our laundry done and out of our mind as not thinking about it isn’t an effective solution. After all we all need clothes to wear! You just don’t want to go crazy as you try to keep up with it. I put together tips and hints for speedy laundry and how to dry your clothes faster.
How to do laundry faster

Let’s dive into our laundry basket of hints and tips for getting your laundry done quicker


1. How often you do laundry matters

Is it better to do a little laundry or a lot of laundry at once? If you find you’re someone who really hates doing the laundry, try doing way more or way less often. Throw out the script and try what ever strategy you have aren’t using right now. Some will find it is easier and faster to save all their laundry up through the week and spend the morning at the weekend blitzing it all. Others might find that a little a day, keeps the stress at bay. Switch up your routine and you’ll be surprised how happy you might be.

2. Get sorted

Sorting through a basket of laundry when you need to wash a specific set of clothes (colours, delicates etc) can be a boring and tedious task. So finding ways to get your household to do it automatically as you chuck things in the laundry basket can save you time with presorted laundry loads. Whether you have a communal laundry basket or one in each room, switch them up for divided hampers. Darks can go in one section and lights in another straight away. In a similar pre-sorting effort, missing socks can be the bane of everyone’s laundry life, as is pairing them up after takes ages. A simple solution is giving everyone small mesh laundry bag for socks. Once a week, or when you need to wash them, collect them all up, zip them up and throw them in the washing machine with a normal laundry load. Once the loads done, hand the sock bag back to everyone and pop them away. No more sorting at all! The work’s done before you get to the washing machine.

3. Fold fast

Once your washing and drying is done, immediately take them out of the dryer and hang or fold them. Taking them out and thinking about folding them later means you’ll often leave them which can then make them more wrinkled. Folding your clothes or hanging them up straight away makes your ironing easier and quicker

How to dry your clothes faster

How to dry jeans quickly

As long as sorting, folding and washing takes, a lot of the time taken in doing laundry can come from drying. If the clothes you want to dry in hurry are something quick and simple as a few pairs of jeans or trousers, adding a dry towel in with your drying load acts as a moisture separator. Bulking the drying load with towels removes moisture from the clothes quicker. This reduces the moisture in the washing machine and reduces the drying time.

Wetter clothes take longer to dry

Find out how to get clothes to dry faster when they are very, very wet. If they are soaking, it would take them hours to get dry using the drying cycle alone. Instead run the spin and drain cycle to remove as much excess moisture from your clothes as possible. It might take an extra 10 to 15 minutes to run, but will save you a lot of drying time later. Once the spin cycle is complete, set the dryer to its highest temperature for 15 minutes, before lowering the temperature. Remember to check the care label on your clothes to ensure the extra heat won’t damage them.

How to dry your priority clothes faster

Are there clothes which you need straight away or sooner than others? If so, separate these immediately from the rest of your load when they come out of the wash and put them straight away into dryer. Turn it to the highest heat for 15 minutes to remove excess moisture before stopping the cycle and adding the rest of the load for the remainder of the cycle.

Going without a dryer 

Sometimes ideas can seem counter intuitive. Like saying you can dry clothes faster without a dryer than with one. Start by spinning your load and removing as much moisture as possible before you get to the drying stage. As soon as they are out of the machine, lay your clothes out on a large fluffy towel and roll them up in it like a swiss roll. Now twist the towel starting at one end, moving along. This removes extra moisture before you can hang them in the best way. There are other tips on getting your laundry dried in a flash in this guide.

Laundry is a fact of life, something which we just have to do. But as we’ve seen, you can make it easier and quicker.

Written by Russell Bowes
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