TikTok Shares The Laundry Routine Of Your Dreams To Keep The Family Organized

Laundry is basically four chores in one — cleaning, sorting, folding, and putting away — so it's hard to get on top of it, especially when you have a busy household and there's always another load to do. Before you've folded and put away the clean clothes, a heap is already in the dirty basket calling for your attention. To fix this problem, TikTok creator @hortonlane shared a great laundry schedule that helps her family of seven stay organized. The hack is to break down the chore into three separate steps that can be done over three days — and that all happens continuously every day, so you're never left with a giant pile of dirty clothes.

The first step is washing and drying, the second step is sorting, and the third step is putting things away. The main idea behind this routine is that you don't have to feel like you need to do everything all at once. Breaking any type of chore or task down into smaller steps is a life hack to make it feel less stressful or overwhelming. You will even feel a sense of accomplishment after each step, motivating you to keep going until the task is completely done. Keep the cycle going and you won't feel the weight of doing everything at once because you'll be putting clothes away in a reasonable amount of time.

Here's how to follow this laundry schedule. On the first day, throw your family's clothes into the wash at night, an hour or two before you plan to go to sleep. You can do this load at any time, but this might be the most convenient option if you have kids because you can do it after they fall asleep. Then, before you go to bed, move the clothes over to the dryer. On the morning of the second day, take out the clean clothes as part of your chores — or have a family member (perhaps some of your kids) do this. This means moving it from the dryer to the bed, table, or wherever it goes for you to arrange the items.

Next, separate the items into piles for the different members of your household and bring them to their respective bedrooms. The simplest hack that will make sorting clean laundry a breeze is to give everyone their personal basket so their things go straight into their own container. You don't need to fold them, as each family member can fold their own clothes and put them away when desired. Then, at night, you repeat the night routine of day one and complete another load of laundry. On the third day, the morning chores will include taking out the clothes from the dryer, sorting them, and folding and putting your own clothes away that were sorted yesterday. 

Our first thought about this routine is that it works best for a very busy household because they need to do laundry every day to get ahead of the chaos that could quickly ensue. However, this doesn't mean it can't work for someone living alone, because it makes laundry much easier to handle. A single person or even a couple may want to modify this schedule to wash every other day or every few days, since they'll have less dirty clothes to wash. We also think the hack can be improved upon if you have a bit more free time on your hands. Modify the routine to combine steps two and three of sorting and putting away for yourself, and you'll have your clothes organized and ready to wear faster.

However, one potential downside of this hack is that clothes will sit in the dryer for an extended period of time, which may lead to wrinkles. Also, something to be cautious about is the environmental impact of doing laundry daily. For households who can't avoid this, some sustainability tips for a more eco-friendly routine are to use cold water whenever possible, use less detergent, invest in environmentally-friendly products, and make sure you're doing big loads instead of washing only a few items at a time.