Our habit for August is working on Laundry. If we can control our laundry by doing one load of laundry per day, laying our clothes out each night and getting dressed each morning becomes a simple habit to practice. Our habit this month is all about making our lives easier. So, join us in our new habit of doing one load of laundry each day. Check out the great info below.
A load a day keeps CHAOS away! – FlyLady
Sometimes the most daunting part of doing your laundry is getting it started, but if you make automatically sorting your clothes part of your routine, it’s much easier to just throw in a load! Make laundry easier on yourself and check out some of our tools in The FlyShop!
Here are the habits we have covered so far this year. Remember to reinforce these habits while completing your new one:
- January – Shining Your Sink
- February – Decluttering for 15 minutes a day
- March – Getting dressed to shoes
- April – Making the bed
- May – Moving
- June – Drinking water
- July – Swish and swipe
Don’t forget to keep up with the habits you created. View our habit archive.
Building a Laundry Routine
Dear Friends:
This week we are in Zone 3, the main bathroom and another room in the house. This week we are going to face the Laundry Room!
The laundry area is a very important part of your home, this room is what keeps us supplied with clean clothes. Laundry is one of those things that if not done with routines; will pile up faster than anything else in our homes. The clothes seem to multiply and before we know it we are surrounded by the piles and feel like it will never get done. A consistent laundry routine is truly the only way to stay ahead of Mount Washmore forming before your eyes.
What does it mean to do the laundry?
Well for some it just means to actually get it to the place where you know eventually it will get washed. For others it means that you get it washed and dried but never get it out of the dryer or laundry room. YOUR DRYER IS NOT A LAUNDRY BASKET!
Doing the laundry means that you take it to the machine, you wash, dry, fold, hang up and get this….PUT IT AWAY WHERE IT BELONGS! Now I know that is the hardest part, that is why for Fly babies we recommend small loads every single day, this way you get the backlog of laundry taken care of and get yourself into a routine of doing it.
Your Laundry Routine looks like this:
- Get clothes into the laundry area
- Separate Laundry into colors (light and dark, towels, whites and bleach piles.
- For each load that you are about to do, turn the clothes right side out and unroll the balled up socks.
- Check for stains so you can hit them with a prewash treatment Put Laundry in Washer, add soap and or bleach
- Add Fabric Softener (if you do this at this stage)
- When Laundry is washed, put into dryer, check your time, we waste a lot of time and energy by over drying our clothes.
- Hang anything that needs to be hung. Do it right then out of the washer or dryer, this saves on the wrinkles
- Fold clothes immediately out of the dryer. Do not throw the clothes in a laundry basket and take the basket to another area of the house to be folded ! You know why! It will stay in the basket unfolded and then everything needs to be re-washed because it is so wrinkled.
- Put Laundry away as soon as it is folded.
- Then start the next load into the dryer.
If you are really good about staying on top of your laundry, then throw in a load into the washer once you have put the other load in the dryer. If you have a tendency to forget, then don’t start another load until one is COMPLETE! Complete is from sorting to put away.
Following these steps will get your Laundry completed. As FlyLady always says: Nothing says I love you like clean underwear!
FlyLady
PS – NEVER LEAVE THE HOUSE WITH THE WASHER OR DRYER RUNNING!! WHY? THINK FIRES AND FLOODS. ENOUGH SAID!
PPS – Speaking from personal experience: NEVER wash towels with clothes unless you like the lint look!