Create a laundry routine to fall in love with – sounds too good to be true? Sounds like I’m pulling your leg?

Bear with me (because I totally get it)…

Sometimes, it might feel like no one’s there for you, but you know who’s always there for you?

Laundry.

Laundry will always be there for you!

Doing the laundry isn’t just ‘popping a load on’. However, that’s exactly how many people see it and how I used to see it. And seeing it this way is how you end up in a laundry mess – overwhelmed, unmotivated, and cheesed off.

This is what leads to an overflowing dirty laundry basket, piles of clean clothes that need to be folded and put away, and frantically rummaging through these piles when you’re trying to pull an outfit together (for you or your kids) when you’re getting dressed in the mornings.

Laundry is a cyclical, multi-step process. It involves sorting, washing, drying, folding, ironing or steaming and putting clothes away. A task which can often feel like a never-ending chore you don’t have time for – especially if you’re in a season of life where you’re spinning plates and juggling multiple responsibilities!

Let’s face facts: It is a never-ending chore and will continue to be so for as long as you continue to wear clothes and use linens. Maybe, just maybe, in an attempt to make it more enjoyable, it’s best to accept the job with gratitude and approach it with a different mindset. And the best way to do this is to create a laundry routine that works for you.

 

Create a laundry routine to fall in love with

 

Love your laundry routine tip #1

Take pleasure in the mundane

I know it sounds boring, but how you approach anything really makes a difference to the outcome.

Instead of thinking, “I have to do the laundry” (with your knuckles dragging along the floor like a toddler being dragged home from the park), try looking at it as a privilege. Alter your thoughts to “I get to do the laundry”. Feel gratitude that you get to take care of your clothes and your family’s clothes, and how lucky you are to have lovely clothes to take care of.

Changing your mindset around the laundry process, seeing it as a priority rather than an afterthought, and allowing time to do it properly will give you a sense of achievement and contentment that feels surprisingly good. Folding clothes can actually be a very calming and mindful activity once you get going. To make it more enjoyable, you could listen to music, a podcast, or an audiobook at the same time.

I used to hate ironing with a passion, but now I look forward to it because I do something author James Clear calls ‘temptation bundling’. In his book Atomic Habits, he explains that temptation bundling is a useful strategy where you pair an activity you need to do (but may not enjoy) with an activity you enjoy.

This technique helps to make the less enjoyable activity more appealing by linking it with a positive experience, making it easier to stick to beneficial but not inherently enjoyable habits. To make ironing more appealing and enjoyable, I set up my iPad and watch a TV show or catch up with my favourite YouTube channels. It’s so much more fun that way!

 

Love your laundry routine tip #2

Make it a priority

As I have grown older and the longer I have been running a home, laundry is the ONE THING I now prioritise above all other chores.

Why?

Because when the laundry routine is going well (and it does most of the time now), life feels good. There is order, there is calm, and I feel in control. It’s as simple as that.

I’ve made plenty of mistakes and learned the hard way that if I let the laundry slide and allow things to pile up, it becomes the overwhelming definition of ‘chore’ – an overflowing dirty laundry basket and an ironing pile reminiscent of a Himalayan mountain that has become a lot more difficult and time-consuming than it needs to be. Even if I get nothing else done in a day other than go to work, make my bed and complete a laundry cycle, I’m happy. Other things can wait, but the laundry can’t!

 

Love your laundry routine tip #3

Make it easy

To keep clutter at bay and avoid dirty clothes and socks littering the floor, give each household member their own dirty laundry hamper. Or, at the very least, place one in a central spot that can be accessed easily. This will encourage independence in even very small children to put their dirty clothes in the correct place from a young age. The earlier, the better when it comes to instilling good habits.

 

Love your laundry routine tip #4

Create a laundry routine that works with your schedule

Creating some structure with a laundry routine has helped me enormously. Implementing a laundry routine will make a significant difference in how you manage the laundry cleaning process overall and help you maintain it with ease.

Here are some tips to help you create a simple laundry routine that works for you:

Assess your needs and determine how often you must launder your clothes and linens based on your household size and lifestyle. Estimate the average number of loads you generate each week and then experiment. There is no ‘one size fits all’ with this. For example, a family of four will most likely need to do laundry more frequently than a single person, possibly every day. It’ll take a bit of trial and error to find the sweet spot, and eventually, with some consistency, you’ll slip into a routine that’s perfect for you and your household.

If you don’t need to do laundry every day, choose specific days for doing it. For instance, you could designate Tuesdays and Thursdays as laundry days or keep it until the weekend if you have a busy work week. Spread the tasks over several days to avoid feeling overwhelmed. You could wash on one day and iron/fold on another.

Ensure laundry tasks are incorporated into your morning and/or evening routine. For example, you could start a load in the morning and move it to the dryer when you return home. Likewise, you could wash and hang clothes outside to dry in the morning and iron, fold and put away in the evening. In the winter, my laundry routine takes longer and spans two days because I have no dryer and have to hang the laundry indoors to dry. I still do a wash every day, but it hangs for a whole day before I can remove it and iron/fold/put away.

Be okay with not emptying the dirty laundry basket every time you do laundry. Remember, laundry is a multi-step process. That means even if you wash every day and are on top of your laundry routine, there will still be articles of clothing and/or linens in the dirty laundry basket waiting to be washed. This is fine.

Laundry is a continuous cycle with no finish line.

Having the mindset that ALL the laundry should be done will only result in feelings of inadequacy and frustration because, for most of us, that’s an impossible standard to maintain. No sooner have you ‘finished’ and the dirty items will start piling up again. The goal is simply to ‘maintain’ the laundry cleaning process, not to empty the basket completely. Look at your dirty laundry basket as a storage solution that is always storing something.

Review your laundry routine from time to time to see if it’s still working effectively and adjust as needed to suit your changing needs.

 

My laundry routine

 

Sorting & washing

My laundry routine starts the night before when I’m getting ready for bed. I collect the dirty laundry from the children’s laundry bins and sort it into whites, colours, and darks on my bedroom floor, along with the contents of our laundry bin. This means I completely empty all three dirty laundry hampers every night, but there’s a very good reason for doing this.

It gives me clarity.

This way, I can see visually how much needs to be washed, and I know ALL the dirty laundry in the house is right in front of me. Whichever pile is the largest gets tipped into the washing basket and set aside for the morning. The rest goes back into our dirty laundry hamper, where it will stay until I repeat this same process the following night and every night after that. I then return the children’s empty laundry bins to their rooms.

Simply washing the largest pile each day stops the laundry bin from overflowing and keeps the process manageable. I limit it to one load per day max and that is the system that works for my household at the moment, which is four adult-sized people.

Occasionally, I’ll add the dirty laundry to the washing machine, and it won’t all fit. Instead of doing an extra load that day, I’ll take the excess back upstairs and pop it back into the dirty laundry hamper, prioritising any items I know need washing sooner rather than later for the wash that day.

 

Drying

As I mentioned above, I don’t have a dryer, so in spring and summer, when the weather is nice, my clean washing hangs on my rotary dryer outside. In autumn and winter, I use radiator racks to hang the washing to dry. They hook onto the radiators and have rows and rows of metal rods for the laundry to dry on. I always open the windows, even just a crack on a cold day, to allow fresh air to flow and any dampness and condensation to escape.

 

Finishing (iron/fold/put away)

When the washing is dry, I fold and put away the items that don’t require ironing first. For other household members, I leave their items on their beds for them to fold and put away themselves.

I try my best to iron every evening or every other day if I can, but I don’t always manage it. It is so much easier to have five items to iron that will only take 10 minutes than leaving it until there is a pile that will take two hours. I encourage you to think of your future self when it comes to ironing! Do the hard work now so you can relax later.

When you create a laundry routine you love, you’re setting yourself up for a more organised, calmer, and likely more stylish way of living. No more freaking out about what to wear to a short-notice event because all your outfits are laundered and ready to go. No more trying to find somewhere to hide the overflowing ironing pile when people stop by unannounced. No more headspace taken up by the constantly looming spectre of having to tackle the dirty laundry basket.

I’d love to hear if you found this helpful – connect with me on Instagram and let me know!

If you are interested in learning more about household routines, check out my new book, Zone Cleaning: The Ultimate Guide – Your secret to maintaining a clean and tidy home without the overwhelm.

I’m off to put a load in the machine…