Hacking the laundry

It is once again laundry day at my house and I thought that I would share with you all my tips for making laundry day a bit easier on me...feel free to add your own in the comments.

Sorting the laundry.
Kiddo has a 3 laundry sack sorter.  One for whites, one for colors and one for her jeans.  She puts her delicates on the bottom.  Hubby & I have 3 plastic laundry baskets...same idea.  As we take off our dirty laundry, we all self sort our items.

Delicates
they go into those mesh laundry bags (like the ones in the sorter link above) and get tossed in with the rest of the load.  No hand washing here.  Once the load is done the bag is easily found and those items can then...
Hang Delicates to air dry.
This house came with a laundry drying bar in the laundry room, but that is more for items you hang on clothes hangers.  So I had hubby (could have done it myself, but he complains less if I let him do it) help me install a clothes line in the laundry room for hanging up the delicates.  the heat of the dryer in the laundry room keeps it more arid in there so items are usually dry by the time I finish the last load (I wash the delicates in the first load to facilitate this!)

DIY laundry detergent
http://happymoneysaver.com/making-your-own-laundry-detergent-worth-the-cost/  I started using this recipe a few years ago and I will never go back to buying name brand detergent again.  This recipe is way cheaper, last so much longer and gets our clothes so much cleaner.  I mean why would you ever pay for all that filler in the name brand stuff?  I don't put in the fragrance stuff as my family doesn't like it...they prefer the smell of the regular ingredients.

DIY dryer balls
http://livesimply.me/2014/09/04/homemade-wool-dryer-balls/  I made up a batch of dryer balls.  I'm pretty sure that I blogged about them here before.  While I was felting them, they sort of imploded...or exploded?  anyway, it was a mess because I had forgot the important step of stuffing them into old hose before trying to felt them.  So I rewound them, stuffed them into the hose and then just left them in the hose.  They're still in the hose today, but it's not looking so good.  I figure once the hose totally dies the balls will hold up on their own for a long time.  Now I set the dryer for the sensor setting and the clothes get dry faster because they're getting fluffed up more.

finally
DIY "dryer sheets"
even though the dryer balls are supposed to eliminate the static, here they just don't.  So I did this http://lifecheating.com/2013/11/16/never-ending-dryer-sheets/  I didn't cut the sponges, I bought a six pack of smaller sponges and used a smaller container so the sponges all stand up on end (makes rotating easier)  I did notice that this method would leave an oily residue on our clothes, so I tossed an old wash cloth over the sponge (I put the sponge in first, then the wash cloth, then our clothes with the dryer balls).  Now all the extra oils are soaked up by the wash cloth and the clothes are static free.

In the summer I hang the clothes up outside when I can.  Unfortunately that isn't much here.

oops, not done yet...
http://www.instructables.com/id/Fast-way-to-fold-a-T-shirt/  Only I don't even do that much when folding the shirts.  I lay the tshirts out flat.  Pick up a shirt at the first folding line, fold the shirt in half and then tuck the other fold line as I'm setting the shirt on the pile.  Hubby isn't a fan of this method (since it isn't the way his mom did it) so he refolds his shirts, but he doesn't dare say anything about the way I do it, lest he wash his own clothes.  bwahaha!