Laundry, Laundry Everywhere

I have to admit, I have a love/hate relationship with the laundry.  There are some days when I really enjoy doing laundry.  Sorting, loading into the washing machine, taking warm clothes out of the dryer, folding and putting clothes away.  Sometimes I feel like Snow White with the birds flying around me as I fold clothes while watching a guilty pleasure on television.  All goes smoothly and everyone is happy in the house with drawers full of clean clothes.  Favorite outfits at our disposal.

Other times, laundry goes horribly wrong.  I don't mean that I ruin the clothing.  I don't shrink clothes or get bleach stains.  What I mean is that I start out strong.  Sorting, loading into the washing machine, putting the clothes in the dryer.  Then, this is where it goes terribly wrong, I don't take the clothes out of the dryer in a timely fashion.  I may be talking about a couple of hours OR I may be talking about a day or two.  Before you pass judgement, please tell me I'm not the only one who is guilty of this.

You know what you get when you leave clothes in the dryer for some time once the cycle is complete?  I know you do.  You get a bunch of wrinkled clothes.  No matter how much I hand iron and how well you fold the laundry, it ends up looking like a sloppy mess.  Sometimes I just would put a brief, warm cycle on the dryer to "touch up" the clothes and help with the wrinkles.  It just wasn't doing the trick.

One day, I saw the most beautiful tweet from a detergent company on Twitter.  This little pearl of wisdom has changed my life when it comes to those pesky loads of laundry that don't make it from the dryer to the folding table in a timely fashion.  I add a couple of ice cubes to a quick drying cycle and the wrinkles disappear.  Voila!  Common sense right?  Something so simple, having a profound effect.  I used to get frustrated when I wound up with wrinkled clothes.

Don't fret about wrinkled clothes anymore.  Simply add them to the dryer with a couple of ice cubes and watch all your troubles - and wrinkles, fade away.

Do you have any household tricks that make your life easier?  Do you think you'll throw some ice cubes in the dryer the next time you have some wrinkled clothes?





photo credit: dok1 via photopin cc