Half of the battle of doing laundry is sorting through your dirty washing and deciding what to put in each load. These tips on how to sort your laundry will make that process easier.

• Partitioned laundry basket
• A basket per room
• Separate pre-treated clothing 
• Clothing colour
• Fabric type
• Level of dirtiness 
• Use Laundryheap

Partitioned laundry basket 

A partitioned laundry basket is a great way to begin sorting your clothes. They usually come in sections of two or three. This means that you can have a partition for your colours and darks if you have two partitions, or colours, blacks, and whites, if you have three partitions. If you stick to only putting the correct colour in each section of your laundry basket, when it comes to laundry day, it will be as simple as unloading one partition at a time. 

A basket per room 

Alternatively, to the partitioned laundry basket, you could assign a washing basket per room in your home. This means that you can do a load of washing per room at any given time. You will find that by using this method you will begin washing similar items and fabrics together. For example, a laundry basket in the bathroom will be filled with towels of the same or similar fabrics. This saves time sifting through your clothes to find similar fabrics that can be washed on the same setting. 

Separate pre-treated clothing

When you stain your clothing it’s always best to treat the stain immediately. After you’ve pre-treated your stain, if you don’t want to wash the item of clothing straight away, separate it from the rest of your washing and put your pre-treated items in the same pile. This will help you with your laundry firstly because your stained items should be washed as a priority, but secondly, because your stained items may have been pre-treated with chemicals that could damage your non-stained clothing. 

Clothing colour

Regardless of whether you use a laundry basket, or simply create a laundry heap, it’s always a good idea to sort your clothing by colour. Create a coloured, dark, and white, pile, perhaps even separating your coloured pile into darker and lighter colours. It’s important to wash similar coloured clothing together to avoid colour run stains. By creating separate coloured piles of laundry, pre-laundry day, you save yourself the task of sifting through a basket of dirty laundry to find similar colours to wash together. 

Fabric type

As important as it is to wash similar colours of clothing together, it is also important to wash similar fabric types together. When your clothing goes into the washing machine, the items rub against one another as the washing machine spins. If you wash a rougher fabric, such as denim, with a delicate fabric, such as silk, this rubbing together creates friction that can cause fibres to break, leading to the delicate fabric to tear. To avoid this, make sure that you wash similar materials together. This will also help you decide what setting to wash your items on as some materials are best washed on hotter or colder washes. 

Level of dirtiness 

If you have clothing that is very dirty, a muddy sports kit, for example, it’s best to separate this clothing from the rest of your washing. Incredibly dirty clothing may have to be washed more than once in order to fully remove the dirt. If you wash your dirty clothing with less soiled clothing, you risk dirtying your normal laundry further. It’s best to sort your heavily soiled laundry separately, washing it as a priority, then cleaning your washing machine out before doing your usual laundry load. This will prevent any cross-contamination of dirt and ensure that all of your laundry is effectively cleaned.  

Use Laundryheap

If you haven’t found the right sorting method for you, let us take the load off and sort your laundry for you. You can book your Laundryheap dry cleaning slot by heading to the Laundryheap website or by downloading the free Laundryheap app.