Tips Tuesday: Tips for Doing Laundry

This week's Tips Tuesday (hosted by Leslie at Lamberts Lately) is tips for doing laundry.

I don't have a bunch of ground breaking tips, but here are a few things I do when I am doing laundry. I really don't care for doing laundry, especially ironing, so you may call them the lazy girl's guide to doing laundry =O)

Wash in cold water -- I typically wash all of my clothes in cold water. I do this for 2 reasons: 1. it keeps my things from shrinking and 2. I only have to pay for hot water (I don't understand it, but my leasing office confirmed it). Therefore, to save my clothes, and my water bill (and gas bill for the water heater), I wash everything in cold. Sometimes I'll wash towels and bedding and what not in warm if I think they need it.

Hanging to dry -- I hang the majority of my clothes up to dry. All pants, nice shirts, skirts/dresses, bras, etc. get hung to dry. My washer/dryer is in my guest bath, so I typically just hang everything up on the shower rod to dry. This also helps the things I do dry to dry faster since there is not as much in the dryer.

Fluffing for wrinkles -- I hate to iron, therefore I try to fluff whatever I can in the dryer first, and then go over it with an iron, but only if really needed. I especially do this to all things that I hang to dry. I throw them in the dryer for a few mins after they are completely dry just to fluff out the wrinkles. Luckily I can wear jeans everyday to work, so I hardly ever iron.

Folding -- I typically fold my clothes right out of the warm dryer. This helps keep them from getting wrinkled, and keeps me from having a large basket of clothes that sits there and daunts me. I know it takes time, but it's going to take the same amount of time anyway, and it is easier to break it up into smaller chunks.

Dry cleaning -- I don't dry clean. If the item needs dry cleaned, I either don't buy it, or I try and wash it. If it says dry cleaning recommended, then you can typically wash it out by hand or in the delicate cycle. If I had to take clothes to be dry cleaned, they would never get there.

Removing grease stains -- One time I had this really cute silk type shirt, and I ended up getting neosporin on it. I tried washing it several times, tried soaking dish soap on it, and nothing got it out. I almost had to get rid of this really cute shirt (that I had only worn 2 times!!) when I came across an article online about using babypowder to remove grease stains. I didn't have baby powder, so I tried flour (yea, the stuff you bake with!) instead. I laid the shirt on the counter on top of a towl. I put a handful of flour over the stain, laid another towl on top of the flour, and then put a heavy object on top of it for about 20 mins. I went back, shook off the flour, and some of the grease was gone. So I repeated this about 2 or 3 more times, and the flour soaked up all of the grease. That is the only time I have tried that, but that one time made me a believer. Hopefully you will never have to try it though!

Hope you enjoyed some of my laundry tips, and if you have any you would like to share please do so. And check out Leslie's blog for more tips.