Laundry Tips and Tricks

Oh me, oh my. I hope I don't bore you too much with this prompt!

June 28 - How do you do your laundry? Give your laundry tricks.

So there are only two of us living here which means that laundry only really needs to get done once a week or so. I usually do it on my Friday off of work or sneak it into a Saturday or Sunday morning. The nice thing is that I only have three loads to do, so it goes relatively quickly!

I separate our clothes into 3 piles: darks, lights, and crap-that-needs-germ-killing.

Darks are mostly my scrubs from work, jeans, and some t-shirts. Lights are all of Trevor's work shirts, some undershirts/camis, and our daily shirts and khakis. Basically everything else gets tossed into the germ-killing pile: towels, washcloths, underwear, socks, etc. If it got moist or sweaty or just generally gross, it goes in the germy pile.

I wash my darks and whites on cold/cool/lukewarm temperature settings in my front loading washing machine. The germ-killing stuff goes in on warm or hot - depending on the load. All three loads get the same detergent, but I use a splash of white distilled vinegar (in the fabric softener slot in the washer) with my towels to make them more fluffy and to keep the mildewy smell at bay. More on my detergent in a bit.

Then, my darks and lights go out on the line to dry. If it's nice out, they go outside. If not, they go on the lines we have hung in the basement.

The germy stuff gets tossed in the dryer to heat it up and hopefully kill the gross stuff.

Because I hate folding and putting away clothes, I try to do that as soon as they're dry... because I can tell myself that it will be over faster that way! However, we still sometimes have piles of laundry in our room. We don't have enough space for everything despite my best efforts to get as much as possible in the closet.

Ok, enough rambling, you want to know about the detergent!

I use Ecos Liquid Laundry Detergent (I love the lavender smell) because it works well, smells great, and is freaking natural! Have you ever looked at what's in traditional laundry soap... I hadn't... and then I did... and now I only buy this stuff. End of story. Anyways, this is what's in the soap (taken right from their website): 100% natural anionic coconut kernel oil based surfactant, horsetail plant, essential oil of lavender (NOP Certified Organic), purified water. Yes, please! All opinions are entirely my own - nobody paid me to write all these nice things... but if they wanted to send me jugs upon jugs of laundry detergent I wouldn't object ;) I also just want to throw this out there: I've used vaska detergent in the past and have had great results with it as well. It just so happens that a jug of Ecos is cheaper and easier to find than the smaller jugs of vaska.

I don't use fabric softener because it's full of nasty chemicals and I don't really feel like our clothes come out stiff or lacking. Not even when they're line dried. 
On a similar note, I pass on the dryer sheets. To be honest, we haven't had an issue completely forgoing them but I am thinking about getting some dryer balls to use to speed things up.
I also don't find myself needing a stain remover. Everything that I've tried to get out comes out with either baking soda and water or some of the Ecos detergent. Easy peasy.

 So that's it. That's my simple laundry routine. I hope I haven't bored you and that you're still awake (heck, I hope you made it this far in the post!) after reading all those details.

What does your laundry routine look like? Any tips you can share with me?

This post is part of the Summer Blog Challenge. To see more posts inspired by the challenge visit my Summer Blog Challenge page!

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