The title of this post makes it sound like I have a little army of helpers when it comes to laundry time....I wish! Although my 3 year-old son sometimes helps when I am hanging out the washing ("Here's a sock! Here's another one. And another!"), I am usually working solo when it comes to laundry time, as I'm sure most of you are too!
Laundry is one chore that, to me, never feels finished. You always have some part of the process to complete -- be it the sorting, washing, hanging out, folding or putting away. When I had my first baby, and the washing suddenly doubled, I began to look for solutions to get it done quicker. In this post, I'm sharing a few of the things I use in order to make the whole laundry process a little more efficient.
1 | Drying racks
We installed these drying racks from Ikea in the laundry a few years ago, as I was sick of having a clothes horse in the middle of our lounge room, and I still love them! We have a small section of wall that was perfect for attaching 2 of the racks.
These racks can also fold down against the wall when not in use. Our ironing board is squeezed in beside them.
The racks are only 54cm deep and 56cm wide, they don't take up a lot of wall space, but you can really fit a lot on them.
With 4 members in our family, I can manage to get one large load of washing hanging on the two racks. Because I do a load every second day or so, this works well as it is dry by the time the next load is ready (we have a heating duct directly underneath which is very handy).
2 | Laundry basket
We hang our laundry basket (from Target) from a U-shaped hook on the wall so it is not taking up valuable floor space.
This basket has a great big capacity and is easy to carry to the outside clothesline.
3 | Sorting baskets
We purchased these two laundry baskets from Ikea a few years ago to make it easier to separate whites and black/coloured clothes.
This really saves me so much time in the sorting phase (once I had hubby trained!) so I can just grab the entire contents of the basket and throw it straight into the washing machine without having to sort it all as I go.
4 | Hanging peg-dryers
I love these hanging dryer clothes-pegs (also from trusty Ikea!) for socks, undies, bibs, face-cloths - makes hanging so quick and easy.
I have two of these. I like to hang socks in their pairs so I save time time when they're dry -- I can just un-peg and roll up the pairs. When the peg-dryers are not in use, they sit on top of my dryer, which is under the bench.
