5 Secrets To Greatly Minimize Your Laundry Routine

What does your current laundry routine look like? Are we talking mountains or molehills? I am not exaggerating when I say that I spend no more than 30 minutes a week handling laundry. And this is not coming from some extreme minimalist nomad; we are a fairly average family of 4. No worries! I’m going to share my 5 secrets to greatly minimize your laundry routine.

Secret #1: Fewer Clothes Equals Less Laundry

My first secret is something that you probably already know – fewer clothes equal less laundry. If you’re drowning in laundry, then there’s a good chance that you probably have way more clothes than you need. Even with a family of four, we’re not washing that many clothes, mostly because we don’t have that many clothes. 

We keep all our clothes in the same spots year-round rather than store away clothes for different seasons. Even with a minimized wardrobe, I still have enough clothes that I’m regularly changing up what I’m wearing.

There’s no way around it; if you are experiencing mountainous piles of laundry, you are going to have to take some time to declutter your closet and your clothes situation! 

Secret #2: Worn Does Not Equal Dirty

This is probably the holy grail if you want to minimize your laundry load! Think about it: even if you have a minimal wardrobe, if you’re washing every item you own every week, then you’re still probably going to have a lot of laundry to do.

We don’t do wasteful washes—meaning we don’t wash something unless it’s actually dirty. There are occasions (like the weekends) when we may not even change out of our PJs! So, on a weekly basis, we wash five outfits per person or fewer.

Overwashing damages the fabric prematurely and causes items to shrink, fade, or become rough. Most high-end clothing companies recommend rarely washing to preserve the fabric. Overwashing also wastes water and electricity. Jeans, in particular, are on the “rarely wash” list.

Of course, everyone’s daily activity patterns are different. If it’s dirty, then, by all means, wash it! But if something isn’t really in need of a wash, you’re doing more damage than good by adding it to the pile.

Secret #3: We Assign Towels

Towels are a huge laundry space (and water) suck. It’s a total waste to wash a bath towel after each use. In my home, these towels are only being used to dry clean water from our clean bodies every other day or so. They really aren’t dirty for a while.

If you’re not washing a towel every day (per person- that’s so many towels!), then you won’t need a pile of towels to grab from either. This is key – we don’t keep enough towels in our house to allow that. We have 2 towels per person.

We used to each have our own towel (back when we were all sharing one bathroom), but now that we have multiple bathrooms, we just have two sets—four for the kids and four for Matt and me. That’s two per person.

Having ownership of your own personal towel or 2 also gives everyone a little more accountability for taking care of their towel and hanging it back up.

Secret #4: We Batch Our Laundry

If you want to minimize your laundry routine, try washing less often. We don’t do laundry every day. I know a lot of people recommend that you make it a part of your morning routine to stay on top of the laundry. Honestly, that sounds like a nightmare, and we don’t even have enough dirty clothes to wash on a daily basis. We only do laundry once a week, sometimes less.

Even if I had enough dirty clothes during the week to wash half a load per day, it would still take me longer than doing it all at once. Time batching is more productive and efficient, no matter what the task.

When you consider the time it takes to change from whatever task you were previously doing, gather the equipment to do the laundry, and then actually handle the clothes themselves, it doesn’t matter how many clothes you’re working with. It’s going to take longer to do more frequent loads.

Secret #5: We Share The Load

We each put away our own clothes – even the kids. If you’re putting away 5-7 outfits (or fewer) per week, that’s nothing. It takes no time, and everyone knows where their stuff is when they need it.

If you’re thinking,g “Yeah, my kids would never put away their own stuff” (and they’re over 5), then I urge you to reevaluate your stance on that. I’ve found that kids do what they’re used to doing. If you make something a new regular practice (and stick to it), it’ll get done.

My kids now prefer doing it themselves because they have their own systems and locations for their stuff. That’s what you want. If you need a little extra help getting your kids to do their chores, check out this post on using the Greenlight app to help them get on board.

Trust me, if you minimize your laundry, you’ll suddenly have extra hours in your week that you never knew were possible!