Laundry is one thing I'm bad about keeping up with in my house. It's such a big time commitment for me, mostly because if I start folding laundry, I won't quit until it's done. As I type this, the laundry I did this weekend remains unfolded, in the basket, on my laundry room floor!
So, needless to say, I'm excited to read your tips this week. I do have a few things that have worked for me though!
-I only do laundry on weekends. Once you kind of get on a schedule where you do it at the same time every week, it works out...you'll have enough laundry to do at that point. I've mentioned before that we're on a time of use plan with our power company that makes it cheaper to use energy at nights and on weekends. So it's much cheaper to do laundry on weekends for us too!
-It's rare that I even have to worry about this, but I only wash full loads of laundry. Even if it's time to wash reds, if I don't have a full load, I don't do it. Saves time and money!
-I do (usually) 1 load of lights and 1 load of darks every week. Every other week I do reds, and the other weeks I do towels/linens. This has worked out really well for me! I rarely have to skip something on this schedule, and it makes sure I have enough of each load when it's time to do it.
-I've heard before that it's cheaper to use the dryer back-to-back...that way, it doesn't have to warm up each time you use it. So I do all of my laundry back-to-back. It works out well that I do it on the weekends, because that's typically the only time I'm home for that long of a stretch!
-As far as supplies: you can usually find extremely good deals on detergent/softener/dryer sheets if you just look. For example, I got 2 32-load bottles of detergent for free this weekend at Walgreens, and 2 boxes of those new Purex 3-in-1 detergent sheets for $3.50! Southernsavers.com and iheartpublix.com are two great resources for finding these good deals. Remember - stockpile when you see these deals! Laundry products have a long shelf life, so when you see a good deal, get as many as possible.
-If you can't find a good deal on laundry products, you can definitely make them yourself (it sounds crazy, but stay with me). For detergent, the best recipe I've seen is at the Duggar's site. Obviously they do a lot of laundry, so they need lots of detergent! I've never made this recipe because I just don't do enough laundry to justify it, but I've heard from multiple places it's great and cheap! For fabric softener, take a bottle of the cheapest hair conditioner you can find and put it in one of those big (empty) jugs for laundry detergent. Fill it with water, and shake. It works great...I've done this before!
Alright, let's see what you guys have this week!
