Creating a laundry routine or schedule is an excellent way to prevent clothing from cluttering your home. Clothes can quickly pile up without a regular routine to wash, dry, fold, hang and be put away. In my experience, my organizing clients with cluttered bedrooms and closets have some laundry related factors in common:
Excess clothing taking up storage space. There are various sizes and seasons of clothing. Although my client only wears a fraction of the clothes, he or she shops frequently and has not purged the clothing collection in a very long time.
Hampers or laundry baskets that are inefficient to the person’s needs. The size, style, design or amount of laundry containers do not fit the my client’s lifestyle.
No set location for “dry clean only” clothing, or a routine to bring these items into and out of the home. Setting up a place to hang clothing on its way to or from the dry cleaners and a drop-off and pick-up schedule helps to maintain a routine.
“Clerty” clothing in need of storage. Clothing that is not clean, but not dirty, doesn’t have a storage space. Perhaps my client wore it for a short time, but is not ready to wash it yet, so it piles up on the floor.
Clothing storage that is ineffective. The closets, dressers, shelving systems, hangers or other clothing storage currently in use is not the right type or size for my client.
Lack of a visual cue that it is time to wash the clothes. Without proper dirty clothing storage, such as an almost-full hamper, my client doesn’t have an idea of when there’s enough clothing to begin a load of wash.
Absence of a routine laundry schedule. Creating a set schedule to do the laundry, whether is is daily, weekly, or every other week helps to create a cycle of keeping clothing moving from the laundry basket to the drawer.
Time is not set aside to fold, hang and put away clean clothing. Another task that should be a routine is returning clothes to their proper home in dressers and closets.
Inefficient space or products to manage tasks such as folding, hanging items to dry or ironing. Creating a set place such as a drying rack to hang items that do not go in the dryer, and a location to iron clothing can help to make laundry related tasks much easier.
To prevent laundry piles from taking over bedrooms, try to tackle some of these common obstacles and create a laundry routine or schedule. After doing so, you should find it much easier to manage your clothing and keep your bedroom better organized.
