There are many ways in which your life changes when you become a parent.
One of these – a major one – is that you will now forevermore be playing a game of catch-up with your laundry basket.
No, really, it's true. The minute you sigh a breath of relief because you can now almost glimpse the bottom of the basket, is when you'll discover that before you have even blinked, it is full to the brim once more.
And on and on it goes now, for eternity. And never mind just the actual washing. The hanging and folding and putting away is going to be the thing you find yourself spending the absolute vast majority of your time on.
However, one highly organised Australian mum has
come up with an ingenious idea that has reduced her laundry work by an incredible two hours a week.
Brisbane-based Leanne, a nurse and mum, has an Instagram account dedicated to all things cleaning and organising, and regularly shares clever hacks and ideas with her 34,000 followers.
Recently, the crafty mum shared her super simple, yet insanely effective laundry hack – and literally sent the internet into a right spin.
Leanne’s time-saving hack sees her hanging all clothes onto a rack, either inside or outside. Once they’re dry, they’re immediately hung up in the wardrobe.
“I am not a fan of doing laundry however, I have created a way where it is not so labour intensive and boring,” she writes in her post. “I hang all our clothes on this clothes rack to dry and then hang them straight into the wardrobe when they are dry.”
Smaller items such as underwear and socks, she explains, are hung to dry on a peg rack and then immediately folded and put into a drawer.
Taking her system one step further, the busy mum explains she colour codes the laundry, making it easier to know what item belongs to which family member.
“Everyone has a different coloured coat hanger so that it is easier to put away,” she says.
What this does, of course, is reduce the time it takes to sort washing into piles or baskets.
The nifty laundry idea saves Leanne a massive two hours a week, she reveals. But that’s not all it has to offer.
“Best of all I can hang the clothes while watching Netflix and I can do my washing no matter what the weather,” she wrote.
Needless to say, many of her followers tested the method – eager to cut down on the time they spent doing the laundry too.
“Hanging to dry on coat hangers is great. I need to hang more and use drawers less!” said one.
“Don’t mind washing but folding, sorting out takes so much of my time which I dont really like!” said another.
