Of Laundry and Such

I have been thinking lately about how to save money on laundry, the best, most efficient way to do laundry etc... For those of you who need help doing laundry period... Here are my tips.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
It makes a difference where you put the laundry collecting unit (ie. the hamper). Put one in your bathroom, if you can (even a small one in the closet to collect undergarments is an improvement upon the floor...) and also one in your room. Let's face it - you're not going to walk all the way over to your laundry machine to put your dirty clothes in a basket. Put the basket where your clothes end up at night.

TO SORT OR NOT TO SORT
I'll be honest with you - I don't sort much anymore. Undergarments go all together whether they're dark or not, as well as sweatshirts and pants. Unless something is really white and nice (ie. white dress pants, white shirt or sweater) it can probably stand to be washed on cold with darks. The other caveat is if the darks bleed - you'll want to know your clothes and wash those separately.
I wash all my light towels separately from dark since the dark ones leave dark fuzzies all over the white towels... Not attractive, in my opinion. 'Course if you don't mind what your towels look like that's up to you! I also wash all my kitchen towels together - mostly irregardless of color.

WASH ON COLD? WARM? HOT?
These days I wash everything on cold! It takes a lot of energy to warm the water to hot and is basically unnecessary. If you feel that your undergarments should be washed at a warmer temperature to take care of germs - you may do so. Same with towels, but then you will really have to sort.

SAVING
- You don't need a whole capful of soap to get your laundry clean. It gets clean with half a cap. If your load is completely full to the gills you may want to use a full cap, but you can probably get by using less than you are!
- Do all of your laundry at the same time so you can do as many big loads as possible instead of a lot of small loads.
- You can get by with washing your clothes on the 8-minute setting instead of the 12 or 18 minute setting... Unless your clothes are really dirty (ie. you've been traipsing through the mud), they don't need that long to get clean. This will save you electricity.
- Believe it or not, to dry your clothes, it is more efficient to dry in smaller loads than all at once. Once your clothes are through the washer, put half in the dryer and half in a basket while the first load dries. This should cut your dry time down quite a bit.
- Along with the half-load drying strategy, add one or two dry towels to your load and it will go even faster! The dry towel absorbs some of the moisture to cut your drying time.
- You may want to purchase a small drying rack and instead of drying items that you won't need right away - hang them up! This can be helpful especially with items like sweatshirts and jeans that take forever in the dryer.

CLOTHES NEVER GET TO THE DRESSER
This I don't know if I can help you with... But you may want to try dedicating a certain day to the laundry and folding it right away... Try folding while you're watching TV - that might make it more enjoyable. If you are married, enlist the help of your spouse and it will go twice as fast. Then, MAKE yourself go and put them away. I make piles of towels that go to the kitchen, towels that go to the bathroom, and separate the clothes according to whose they are. Then I put it all back in the basket and do a quick round of the places the items go.

DID YOU KNOW?
Dryer sheets can be used for more than drying the laundry...

- Tie a sheet of Bounce through a belt loop when outdoors during mosquito season.
- Eliminates static electricity from your television (or computer) screen.
- Since Bounce is designed to help eliminate static cling, wipe your television screen with a used sheet of Bounce to keep dust from resettling
-Prevent musty suitcases. Place an individual sheet of Bounce inside empty luggage before storing.
- Clean baked-on foods from a cooking pan. Put a sheet in a pan, fill with water, let sit overnight, and sponge clean. The anti-static agent apparently weakens the bond between the food. (This really works!)
- Eliminate odors in wastebaskets. Place a sheet of Bounce at the bottom of the wastebasket.
- Eliminate odors in dirty laundry. Place an individual sheet of Bounce at the bottom of a laundry bag or hamper.
- Deodorize shoes or sneakers. Place a sheet of Bounce in your shoes or sneakers overnight.
- Put a Bounce sheet in your sleeping bag and tent before folding and storing them. Keeps them smelling fresh.

Inaugural Post - Where To Start?

I feel as though I should begin this blog by proving my credibility or something. Well, too bad. I really don't have any credibility to prove. I am no expert; I am just a learner. But all of us started somewhere and maybe the little tips and ideas I have may help someone out in cyberspace :)

At first I was thinking of this blog as a "home-making" blog, but now you have that "woman from the 50's with an apron around her waist" picture in your mind, don't you? But if you're a grown-up (ie. anyone over the age of 18) you are most likely making a home of some sort or will sometime in the future whether you're male or female, in a dorm room, small apartment, big house, new home, old home etc. etc. So I figure it is still an appropriate title, although maybe "life-making" is more like it...

These are the things I have learned from my mom, my dad, my trials and errors, my books, my friends and frequent Google searches.

You can think of them as one girl's thoughts on doing life.

More to come soon...