Laundry day is the worst day of the week, or if you are really bad the worse day whenever you get around to it! To help make your life more convenient we have provided a list of the best laundry hacks we could find! Included are helpful tips, tricks and gadgets that will make your laundry day a little bit easier and faster. Also included are a few tips to help keep your clothes more clean so you can have fewer clothes to wash all the time! Take a look at these helpful hacks!
1. White Vinegar to the Rescue
White vinegar is helpful in so many different ways, at this point it should just be called all-purpose! One great extra perk of white vinegar is that it can help soften sheets! If you put a 1/2 cup of white distilled vinegar in a washer cycle, it will help soften the sheets. Not only soften, but the vinegar will also brighten the sheets too!
2. Keep Chalk Handy
A quick trick to defeat those tough grease stains, is to keep white chalk in your laundry room! A quick rub of chalk on any grease and oil stain will help bring your clothes back stainless! Since chalk is very absorbent, it will absorb all that grease or oil!
3. Ice Cubes
Some of the goo and stickiness that kids can get on their clothes is amazing! One important hack for parents to know is that if they leave ice cubes to melt right over the mess, it will harden. Once the gunk has hardened, it will be way easier to get it off the clothes before putting it in the wash. No need to transfer all that stickiness to other clothes!
4. Pool Noodles Versus Creases
One of the most irritating things to happen after cleaning your laundry, is realizing the laundry rack has left a crease on all your clothes! One easy way to combat this is buying a pool noodle, weirdly enough. If you cut the pool noodle and wrap it around the laundry rack’s rods, your clothes will never make a crease there again.
5. Hair Flat Irons?
Everyone who irons knows there are always those hard to reach spots, like between the buttons on shirts or making sure the collar is nice and flat! One way to get around those issues is to use a hair flat iron instead of a normal iron. A hair flat iron is smaller and easier to use when going for the hard spots! One bit of advice is to make sure the hair flat iron is clean before using it on your clean clothes.
6. Un-shrinking Clothes
Clothes shrinking up because of the dryer can be frustrating, especially when its new clothes! One way to un-shrink clothes is by using baby shampoo. Fill up a bucket with lukewarm water, add two tablespoons of baby shampoo and then add in your shrunken up clothes. Let your clothes soak for twenty minutes before taking it out. Once you take out the clothing, drain out the excess water, flatten the item on a flat surface, and then lay it out as taut as you can get it back to its original size. Then wait for it to dry and violá, your clothes should be back to normal size!
7. Lazy for the Win
One of the worst parts about coming home from vacation, is the laundry in your suitcase. One lazy trick that is really a life saver, is to just wash all the clothes in your suitcase! Instead of picking through the suitcase and figuring out what to wash or just living out of a half-clean suitcase for a week, just wash all of it and get it over with!
8. Sort Your Own Way
There are no official rules on how to sort your laundry. Even though all our parents would disagree and tell us there is! To make your life easier, sort your laundry by your own needs. If you want one load of all your towels, and one for really dirty clothes and a last load by a bit cleaner clothes, go for it! This can help reduce the number of laundry loads you have to do.
9. Dryer Lint
If the laundry space you have is a bit cramped, here is one tip to give yourself more space. Instead of having a full trash can in your laundry room, replace it with an empty tissue box! There is not much that is needed to throw away in a laundry room except small scraps from the pockets and the dryer lint after every load! You can fill an empty tissue box with all this and then throw it away and replace. Great space saver!
10. Homemade Spray Bottle
One way to freshen up any smelly clothes is by filling up a spray bottle with vodka! Vodka is a natural deodorizer, so spraying a bit on clothes can help remove any unwanted smells. Make sure to use cheap vodka for this trick though, no need to waste any expensive vodka for your clothes!
11. Dryer Balls
The debate between dryer sheets and dryer balls keeps raging, but everyone should stay on the side of dryer balls! Dryer balls have benefits that dryer sheets do not. The most important being they help speed up the time to dry your clothes! They will also help smooth wrinkles and keep the clothes moving around. If you want to add a nice scent, adding a drop or two of an essential oil into the dryer ball will work just great!
12. Keeping Track
Once you put your clothes in the washer, it can be a pain to remember which load has certain clothes that need different treatment. This could be tops that can not be put in the dryer. A quick way to remember is keeping a dry erase marker close by. The metal on the top of a washer can be used as a board to write any needed reminders about the clothes being washed! Once the load is done, just simply erase your writing and get ready for the next!
13. Sticky Detergent Caps
Everyone knows how the caps from detergent bottles can get super sticky with the detergent. One easy way to clean it without leaving the laundry room is to just put it in the washer and clean it with the clothes! Just make sure you take it out before the dryer or the melting of the cap will make an even bigger mess!
14. Shaving Cream for Stains
One underused trick to remove stains off of clothes is rubbing shaving cream onto the stains! Shaving cream contains many of the same ingredients as household soaps. The foam from shaving cream also helps with getting the stain out at well. Just rub some shaving cream on the stain, let it sit, and then clean off the shaving cream!
15. Freezer versus Smells
If certain clothes are extra smelly, such as gym clothes, try putting them in the freezer overnight! One night in the freezer will help get rid of those funky smells that just will not seem to disappear. This is one trick that has no elbow grease needed at all!
16. No More Lost Socks
Losing one sock out of the pair is always frustrating! Where do they disappear to?!? A trick has been created to combat the loss of socks and its genius! All you have to do is wash and dry your socks in the mesh bags that were meant for delicates! Once socks are kept in the mesh bag there will be no more missing socks.
17. Hand-Washed Clothes
Owning clothes that need to be hand washed only can be a pain. Everyone has become so accustomed to just throwing clothes in the washer and dryer! An easy trick to hand wash these clothes is by using a salad spinner! Throw some detergent and the wet clothing items in the salad spinner and get to spinning! This will ease the process and make sure all parts of the clothes was washed.
18. Lemons for Armpit Stains
One way to get out those nasty armpit stains that will not go away is by using lemon and baking soda! Put some lemon juice and baking soda right onto the stain and let it sit for about one hour. After the hour is up, put the shirt in the washer and say bye bye to those stains!
19. Hairspray for Ink Stains
An active ingredient in hairspray is alcohol and this has been known to help with those awful ink stains! Spray hairspray directly on the stain and leave it for about ten minutes. After the ten minutes, wash the clothes as they would normally be washed and the ink stain should be gone!
20. Laundry Basket Organizer
A major way to help cut the time needed for laundry is by creating a laundry basket organizer. Instead of throwing all your dirty clothes into one hamper throughout the week, keep maybe three smaller baskets. These smaller baskets can be organized into any way that you sort your laundry. So, instead of sorting laundry while putting the clothes in the washer, the clothes will already be sorted!
21. Boiled Lemons
After a certain amount of washes, white clothes tend to fade in their brightness. One way to bring back the this brightness in the white clothing is by using boiled lemons! All you have to do is boil a few lemons in a pot. Once the water has come to a boil, turn the heat off and add in the clothing item to the lemon water. Let them soak for about an hour and the brightness of your white clothes should be brought back to life!
22. Nail File for Suede
Suede shoes can be a hard type of material to keep clean without ruining it! An easy way to clean suede, while protecting it at the same time, is using a nail file. Get that dirt off the suede with the nail file and it will look clean as ever with no marks!
23. Mega Lint Roller
When an entire piece of clothing has lint all over it, a normal lint roller can feel like it takes forever. Therefore, everyone should make a mega lint roller for times like that! Grab a paint roller, role some duct tape around it, with the sticky part facing out and then roll all the lint away. This giant lint roller will cut the lint rolling time down drastically!
24. Drip Catchers
An amazing product that is available are detergent drip catchers! This handy little tool helps keep your laundry room cleaner by catching the excess laundry detergent that always seems to make a mess in the cabinet space! If you do not want to purchase one, an easy way to make one yourself is by cutting an empty bottle of soda and attaching it to your detergent bottle!
25. Ice Cubes Part Two
Ice cubes can come in handy in terms of laundry! Another use for ice cubes is also to de-wrinkle clothes! Put the wrinkled clothes in the dryer with a few ice cubes and set the dryer at its warmest setting. The ice cubes will create steam within the dryer and get those clothes almost iron looking straight!
26. The Dreaded Chair
Many people have the dreaded laundry chair! A chair that holds clothes that are not needing to be washed just yet, but already worn once so it is not perfectly clean. An easy way to make sure you always have an empty chair is to just hang those clothes back up. If you know you will wear it again, hang it up, but create a certain area in your closet, or outside your closet, for these clothes. You can also mark the clothes to know which you have already worn, such as a certain color hanger!
27. Clean Towel
Waiting for the dryer to finish can feel like forever when you need that certain outfit! A quick trick to fasten up a dryer cycle is by including a dry towel into the dryer with the wet clothes! One dry towel will help dry faster all the wet clothes and you can have that needed outfit faster than before!
28. Tennis Balls
Drying pillows, blankets, and comforters will always take the longest in the dryer! These heavy items need that extra time, but if you add a few tennis balls into the dryer with them it will shorten its time! The tennis balls keep all the heavy items moving around in the dryer. This trick will also help keep the pillows, blankets and comforters more fluffy!
29. Baby Shampoo
Some tough sweat stains are hard to get out! If you put some baby shampoo directly onto those stains as a “pre-wash” it can help combat them! Just rub some baby shampoo directly onto the sweat stains and let it sit for about thirty minutes before putting it in the washer. Then wash the clothes as normal and those stains should disappear!
30. Homemade Wrinkle Releaser
If you do not have enough time to get those wrinkles out of your clothes by ironing or a spin in the dryer, then this homemade wrinkle releaser is just for you! Fill an empty spray bottle with two cups of water, one teaspoon of hair conditioner, and one teaspoon of white vinegar. Spray this concoction onto your wrinkled clothes until they are lightly damp and then stretch the fabric to get out those wrinkles!
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