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I used to shudder when I heard the word laundry. The never-ending mountain, the constant piles everywhere, the wardrobe bottom stuffed with clothes that I couldn’t tell if they were clean or dirty, taking five business days to fold clean laundry and put it back…

I have been there. 

It was only after I decluttered over 50% of the stuff in my home that I realised laundry doesn’t have to be so daunting. I’m not saying I enjoy it now. But it’s become a tiny part of our daily routine that just feels more effortless. 

In this article, I’m sharing with you the things I do in my laundry routine that make it a lot smoother and easier to manage. 

Keep reading below or watch the video:

1. Declutter

Decluttering is so underrated when it comes to our laundry routine. 

When we have piles and piles of clothes everywhere, and wardrobes on the floor—I know, I’ve been there—it’s really hard to stay on top of it. And what I’ve learned after decluttering so many things in my home, and probably over 80% of the clothes in my wardrobe, is that fewer clothes mean less laundry.

And I know you might be thinking, “But won’t I be doing more laundry since I have fewer clothes and I have to do it more often?” 

Well, yes and no, because when you do laundry regularly, but with easier loads, it feels easier to manage. It also means you’re going to get more use out of the items you have in your wardrobe, rather than having it stuffed with clothes that you never truly wear. 

That’s what I did for years. Plus, I used to have so many clothes thrown in piles on the floor and in my wardrobe. I used to have a big pile of clothes stuffed at the bottom of my wardrobe. Because very often in the morning, I would pull things out, try to get dressed, but I wouldn’t like the item. So I would just throw it back at the bottom of the wardrobe. I would try another one on and do the same.

Then, even though they were clean clothes and they didn’t need to be put in the laundry, because they were all in piles, I couldn’t tell anymore if they were clean or dirty. They were all on the floor. So I would just pick the whole pile and put it in the laundry because it just felt easier to tackle. 

In reality, I was creating so much more laundry for myself than I really needed to. So decluttering can help massively if you’re struggling with your laundry.

2. The daily routine

I used to do laundry just here and there whenever I got a chance. But I found that making it part of my routine every single day actually helps a lot.

What we do now is, I will put all the clothes in the washing machine in the evening. Then I set a timer on it for the next morning at 5:00 a.m. And because we have the washing machine downstairs and we sleep upstairs, it’s not really bothering us. It’s not that loud anyway.

And there are two things that are helpful when I set this timer. 

For one, because the washing machine will have finished by 7:00 a.m. when we come downstairs for breakfast, the laundry is all ready to be hung up to dry. So I don’t have to wait around for it to finish. 

And two, it’s a lot cheaper because many electricity providers offer cheaper electricity if it’s during off-peak hours. The peak hours are when everybody’s using their electrical devices. That’s usually from 7:00 a.m. when people are getting up, making breakfast, and then in the afternoon at like 5:00 p.m., or when people come home from work and they start cooking dinner. Those are usually the peaks, depending on the area and the service. So if you do your laundry outside rush hours, it’s just going to be a bit cheaper.

This is why setting the timer at 5:00 a.m. has a double bonus.

Then in the morning, once we’ve had our breakfast, we take the clothes up to hang them to dry. It’s a five or ten-minute job. We don’t have a dryer machine, so we put them on a drying rack, usually in our bathroom upstairs. 

I find that drying them in the bathroom is really helpful, instead of having them in the way all the time. I don’t like to hang them in the living room, for example, or the kitchen, just because I find them a bit in the way. But if they’re in the bathroom, they can dry there all day, and I don’t mind that. 

Also, because bathrooms are resistant to moisture, I find that it’s probably better to dry them in there. 

Then by the evening, the clothes are usually all dry. So we just put them back in the wardrobe straight away. Or sometimes we’ll do it the next morning if we didn’t get a chance to. But folding everything and putting it back in the wardrobes as soon as possible. It’s a really quick process. It only takes 10–15 minutes, since the bathroom is upstairs next to the bedrooms.

Streamlining and simplifying this process really helped. And this whole laundry routine has become so seamless and so in the flow of our day. Even my husband, for example, has picked it up—something that he actually probably does more than I do nowadays.

I think people in our family want to help, but sometimes, they don’t know how to help. Plus, if it’s huge amounts, if it’s piles and piles of clothes, it’s really overwhelming. And then everybody in the household is less likely to do it. But if it’s more manageable, if it’s a quick job to do, then it doesn’t feel so daunting. So it’s just much better for everybody involved. 

3. One laundry basket

We only keep one laundry basket.

I’ve thought in the past about buying one with separated sections for whites and darks and blacks. But then I realised, actually, I’m not sure if I really need one, or at least not at the moment. We just throw everything in one laundry basket, take that downstairs, and put the washing on when we need to. 

4. Roughly separate

I don’t do very precise “only whites” or “only blacks.” I just try to kind of mix the same colours together.

When it comes to whites, I will try to put the whites in with either just whites—because we do have quite a lot of those—or I will put them with really light colours, like the light pink from my daughter.

So I’ll do lighter white colours, and then I’ll do darker colours as well. And that’s kind of the rough separation we do. 

5. One load a day

We do one load a day for the most part, though there might be days when the laundry basket is empty. But we generally do one load a day as it keeps the routine going, and it really helps that way. It keeps laundry to a manageable amount, so it’s not huge piles of it. 

And between kids’ clothes—that they get dirty a lot—and towels, bedding and everything else that needs washing, I find that having one load a day is kind of needed.

If we didn’t do one load a day, then we would probably need to do five at the weekend to catch up. But I would rather have this routine going every day to a small, manageable amount than have a huge load to do at the weekend. That’s not how I want to spend my weekends. 

6. Keep it simple

I use one detergent, and that’s a kids’ sensitive skin detergent. We use that for both kids’ and adults’ clothes. I don’t want to have a separate one for kids and a separate one for adults, as I mix all our laundry anyway. It’s a lot easier for me to do laundry if I just tackle it all in one go.

And this is our minimalist way of doing our laundry routine that’s helped a lot. Let me know what laundry tips you have for me. I love hearing from you, and I bet you have some really good tips yourself!