Jordan Page is the mother of five behind the blog and YouTube channel – Fun, Cheap or Free.
She’s like the super hero of all moms, and welcomed us into her fantastically clean and organized laundry room to share some mommy secrets and top tips.
And these tips aren’t just good for moms, they’re useful for everybody!
Who likes doing laundry? No one. Who likes to make things easier for themselves? Everyone.
When you have five kids… you learn a thing or two. She has even designed a system that involves getting all her children to fold their own clothes.
Yes, you read that correctly. I’ll give you a minute to let it sink in.
It’s all thanks to her basket system.
She has a shelving unit with cubby holes, and each person in the house has their own labelled basket.
When the laundry is done, she sorts and loosely tosses the items of clothing into the basket of the person it belongs to, and then leaves the baskets outside the kid’s doors. Then they fold and put away their own clothes before school.
We have to create the utopian societies we desire – Jordan Page for president!
And get this – sometimes when she’s super busy, she’ll throw all the clean laundry in one basket and assign it as one of the kid’s chores to sort instead. Magic.
But before she can give it away to be folded, she has to sort everything and wash it. And it will come as no surprise – she has some great tricks for that too.
Most importantly, a specific sorting system.
Forget everything you’ve learned – we’re no longer sorting by lights and darks. We’re sorting by texture. Jordan uses four or five different baskets to separate all the different loads:
- Grown ups
- Whites
- Heavy fabrics
- Light fabrics
- Towels
- “Church clothes”
Adult clothes are separated out from everything else because their things are bigger and, let’s be honest, not as dirty.
Sure we’ve abandoned the “lights vs darks” system, but whites are still separated out from the rest so they can be bleached.
We all know what a nightmare socks can be… anyone who has ever done laundry before in their lives will agree.
Cute printed socks are overrated. They’re expensive… and where do they even go? That is one of life’s mysteries that cannot be solved with science.
“I’m tired of matching up socks – we lose socks like crazy. So I buy like 30 pairs of socks that are the same and they usually fit a wide enough range of sizes that they fit all my kids feet.” – Jordan Page
And if your kids have drastically differently sized feet, you can get them each their own color. All the white socks with purple toes for one child, socks with red toes for the other.
It’ll save you a lot of time digging through the pile trying to match them all!
A quick life hack is to keep all white towels in the house. It makes sorting them easier and they’re super easy to clean and bleach all together.
And she added her secret of using a little vinegar instead of fabric softener to the wash cycle. Believe it or not… it makes them smell better!
Important note: whites and towels should always be washed with hot water. Everything else uses cold.
Hot water actually sets stains for other clothes. Yikes!
Colors won’t bleed and don’t need to be separated if you use cold water. Even if you used warm or hot… it’s highly unlikely any colors will stain the rest of your clothing.
But I don’t advise you test this theory when washing a bright red shirt for the first time… just sayin’.
Here’s why she suggests separating clothing by texture – between light and heavy fabrics.
If you put a heavy item in the wash with a lightweight item, it will absorb more soap and “get all the attention”. At the end of the day, heavy stuff is more durable and doesn’t need as much care (ie. jammies, denim, sweat pants, etc.)
Light kids clothing, like underwear delicate summer tops or athletic wear, are bound to get dirty faster. And these clothes will need more TLC and should always be washed together.
For visibly dirty spots, Jordan uses a spray & wash product and applies it straight to the stain.
It’s important to let it soak in, but avoid letting it dry! Put the load with spray & wash clothing in the machine first so it doesn’t dry up.
That just leaves the “church clothes”.
Of course that’s not reserved only for clothes that have been inside a church. But generally speaking those clothes tend to be nicer, and made from more delicate fabrics and need a gentle cycle.
Alright, now that everything is sorted, let’s talk washing and drying!
Key point: you almost never need dry cleaning. There may be some exceptions with complicated fabrics or really nice dress shirts. But if you just use cold water on a hand wash cycle… you’ll never need to waste money on dry cleaning!
Settings for the most stained kids clothes: normal, cold, and heavy soil. Boom!
To save money and not waste dryer sheets unnecessarily… you can rip them in half!
They’ll do the exact same job. There are also brands of eco-friendly dryer sheets if you want to be kind to the environment.
And while there are hundreds of different detergent brands out there… Jordan swears by Tide Pods.
However, it’s good to keep a liquid detergent on hand too, because Tide Pods won’t work for any loads of laundry that require a pre-soak.
Bonus: she also saves time by not ironing anything. Say what?!
Instead, she uses a steamer and raves about how useful it is. You can use it in minutes, and it works on any fabric. She doesn’t just have one in her laundry room, but upstairs as well. I think I’m convinced… the iron has never been my friend.
Watch the whole video below for more details about her tips and tricks!
Namely, how she gets her kids to fold and put away their own clothes… genius.
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