Laundry Cleaning

On National Laundry Day (April 15, if you’re curious), GE conducted a poll about the public’s laundry habits. Pertaining to bath towels, “50% of those polled live by the philosophy that ‘I’m clean when I use it’ because they all admit to using their bath towel at least five times before throwing it in the washer. An additional 14 percent use their bath towels more than eight times before it hits the laundry basket.

Laundry isn’t just about washing dirty clothes so you have clean ones to wear. It’s about cleaning and maintaining your wearables and textiles so that they always look their best, whether that means making jewelry sparkle, getting stains out of the lining of a purse, or keeping shoes looking their sharpest. And there’s a simple way to have all those things: A tube of non-gel toothpaste.

Even if you know all about sorting lights and darks, how to wash and dry different fabric types, and you remember to use the mysterious but very useful permanent press setting, there’s still an easily overlooked laundry mistake that could ruin your clothes and, in rare instances, your washer. Here’s the quick task you need to add to your laundry routine: Make sure your zippers are zipped before you do laundry.

Why is doing laundry always so tedious? Maybe because it takes forever. We spend an average of 18,000 hours of our lives on laundry, and just over one year (375 days) just folding clothes. These stats come courtesy of the marketing materials for the Laundroid, an automatic laundry folding robot, of course… because they have an automatic folding machine to sell. But also, you had us at laundry folding robot.

Oh yes, there is a wrong and a right way to wash laundry, and you're probably doing it wrong. No more lazy laundering, y'all.

We may not know what tomorrow brings, but that doesn’t stop us from worrying about it. Because let’s face it: There’s a lot going on in the world and in life. We need to carve out as many happy-making moments as we can. One really good place to start? Your underwear drawer. As sexy as the things within it might be, the drawer itself is a pretty unsexy idea.

What is it about laundry? For some reason, a well-designed and organized laundry area can inspire deep wells of envy. That’s certainly how I felt when I saw IKEA’s gallery of gorgeous laundry rooms—maybe it’s because my washer and dryer unhappily occupy a wall in my kitchen, a wall where style and organization is certainly less of a priority. Here are some of IKEA’s ingenious ideas you can steal for your own laundry space.

With Spring Cleaning for Your Mood, we’re helping you get your housekeeping done no matter what state of mind you’re in. For 20 weekdays in April, we’ll focus on cleaning a new area of your space, with three different ways to get it done—so it’s easy to stay on track even when you’re busy, tired, or away from home. Sign up with your email now and enjoy a better space by the end of the month.

I don’t know about you, but what’s inside my wardrobe is nothing like the magical land of Narnia. It’s mostly a mess of clothes that get rarely worn, but saved nonetheless. Because maybe one day I’ll get invited to a gala in the Maldives where that long, lime green bridesmaid dress can finally earn its keep on my hangers. I’m guessing that, while you might not have a floor-length green dress like mine, your closet is full of similar stories.

Move over, Tide Pod challenge, there’s a new laundry-related caution in town—but this time, it has to do with storage. Displaying laundry packets in jars may look pretty, but according to the American Cleaning Institute, decanting the pods can be dangerous with small children or elderly people in the home. In time for both spring cleaning and National Poison Prevention Week (March 17-24, 2019), the ACI launched its sixth annual Packets Up!

Whether you’re just pulling out your sweaters or putting them away for the season, a moth repellent is key to making your winter wools last. Forget the stinky, toxic moth balls—and who really has the space for a cedar closet? What you need is good smelling, tiny alternative, and we’ve got just the thing!

For most of us, it’s standard practice to clean before guests come over. We want them to feel welcome and comfortable in our house and we honor their presence by creating a general air of order and cleanliness. And on the other hand, we certainly don’t want to be judged for our dusty baseboards and the inside-out socks that seem to always be peppered throughout the house. But there’s more.

Look, we know when you get home after a long day of work the last thing you want to think about is cleaning, but like it or not, it’s a great time to get a little light housekeeping done. If you commit yourself to cleaning a small handful of things before you change out of your work clothes, you’ve got yourself some instant motivation and the opportunity to set yourself up for a calm (and clean) evening of chilling at home.

It might sound like something straight out of “Downton Abbey”or “The Crown,” but you need a clothes valet. No, it’s not a butler you can tell your deepest secrets to as he fastens your cufflinks. But it is going to make getting dressed—and by extension, your mornings—a bit more luxurious and a lot more smooth. A clothes valet is a tall piece of furniture, usually about the size of a full-length mirror, that holds your clothes for the next day.

Adult life is full of difficult decisions. Like which vocation to choose as your profession. Or where to settle down. Or this classic conundrum: what you do when the pile of dirty clothes currently taking up residence in the corner of your room isn’t big enough to wash yet? For many of us, that means tossing the pile into the washing machine to lay in wait until enough clothes accrue to run a cycle — hamper be damned. I mean, it’s a perfectly logical step, right?

On top of handling wrinkled clothes, this trusty tool can tackle lots more housekeeping tasks.

You know my favorite thing about being a human? (Sarcasm alert.) It’s that thing how when your home is really messy, your brain finds it overwhelming and hard to process and almost paralyzing. So then your body can’t muster up the energy or willpower to actually clean it. And so the place just gets more messy and your brain is more overwhelmed and it’s harder every day to actually tackle the mess. Yeah, that’s super fun, right?

Story time: When we first started talking about this at Apartment Therapy, my immediate reaction was, “Machine washable rugs exist?!?” so if you’re reading this thinking, “wait, really?” you’re not alone. (If you did know this already, you can probably still learn a thing or two, and those of us who didn’t know appreciate your patience with us.

No matter where you live, laundry is probably a big part of your routine. In fact, according to a new study by Nielsen, globally 67 percent of people said they do laundry at least twice per week, and another 31 percent said they do laundry every day. But despite similarities in how often people around the world clean their clothes, there are some differences in how they do their laundry (if they even do it themselves at all).

What would you do if you had an extra room in your apartment? Save it for a guest room? Transform it into a home office? Make yourself an at-home gym? For these fashion lovers, their extra room is used for storage — of the style variety! These homeowners and renters carved out a fashion-only room for specific reasons.

So, you accidentally shrunk your favorite sweater. You’ve mourned its loss—and searched desperately for an identical replacement to no avail—and now it’s time to make sure you never make the same laundry mistakes again. In order to become a true laundry master, there are some major things to know—like what those weird symbols on your clothing labels mean, what settings to use, and why you should never ever overstuff your machines.