How to Stay On Top of Laundry Once School Starts

Keeping up with a family’s worth of laundry is a chore no matter what the season, but when kids head back to school and everyone’s calendar fills up with work, class, and nonstop activities, it becomes a mountain of mess.

It can, however, be tamed if you follow a few tips from expert cleaners and organizers. 

Get Into a Family Routine

The first step to taming back-to-school laundry is to not let the dirty clothing and home linens pile up—the longer you wait, the bigger the job is going to be and the longer it will take to complete. Whether you wash, dry, and fold as soon as you have enough for a full load, or designate a certain day of the week as laundry day, make a plan and stick to it.

Breaking the process into pieces also can help you keep up with laundry while keeping it from being overwhelming.

Prerna Jain, founder of Australia’s Ministry of Cleaning, swears by having each family member sort dirty laundry immediately into designated baskets: one for white, another for color, and a third for delicates. Or give each person their own basket for them to fill with their own dirty laundry.

In addition to front-end sorting, you can teach the children to handle other parts of the process so that the chore doesn’t fall solely on the shoulders of one person.

“Depending on their age, they can help sort laundry, fold clothes, or put away their clean clothes,” Jain says. “This fosters responsibility and teamwork within the family.”

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Keep Things Separate

It seems the sorting and folding and putting away all happen at once, and often at a time when you have a dozen other things you need to do. 

Most people toss dirty clothes into a big hamper, and the person in charge of laundry goes from there. Tweaking this plan can help minimize the stress and chaos that often accompany the folding and putting away. Instead of mixing everything together, keep each family member’s laundry separate and focus on cleaning one person’s items at a time.

“Once they are dry, depending on the age of the child or family member, put the clothes directly back into ‘their’ laundry basket, drop off in their room, and have them put their clothes away,” says Amy Motroni, founder of Genius Mom Hacks. “This saves hours of sorting and folding.”

Corral Those Socks

We all know that the washer and dryer somehow gobble up socks, and always just one of a pair. Motroni has the perfect solution: put all the socks in a mesh bag, zip it up, and toss it in the washing machine.

Once they have been washed and dried, you can get the kids to help you by matching each sock with its mate. And you can rest assured that they will all be there.

Make Things Easy

If assigning each family member their own laundry day doesn’t work for you, then you can try a tip from Nathaly Vieira, founder of InspireClean. She swears by what she calls the rule of three:

“The key is breaking up the chore into manageable chunks,” she says.

This means taking one day to wash the laundry, another day to dry it all, and the third day to fold and put away the clothes and linens. This way you aren’t trying to get through your entire family’s pile of dirty clothes at once.

When it’s wash day, Vieira suggests dividing things either into lights and darks or into separate piles for each person, depending on what works best for you. If you get behind, take one weekend day to catch up, she says, and then be sure to start back on a three-day rotation the next week.

Make Machines Work

Newer washers and dryers have settings and options that you can tailor to each load of clothes. Set the water level according to the size of the load, and use either hot or cold water, depending on the instructions for the items being washed. You want to fill the washer, but not overload it. If you cram it too full, the clothing won’t get fully cleaned and you risk damaging the washer.

Adjust your dryer settings as well. If you are drying cotton linens, be sure you choose the right drying cycle to get them dry without getting them so hot they shrink. If you follow the settings correctly, you will optimize the process and save time and energy, says Muffetta Krueger of Muffetta’s Domestic Assistants.

“Explore options such as quick wash cycles, delayed start, or timed drying,” Krueger says. “These features allow you to better manage your laundry routine by completing tasks more efficiently.”

Try a few different options and schedules now, before school begins, and see what works best for your family. Then, when classes kick off again, you will be ready to face that mountain of laundry with confidence.