***Laundry Room Organizers that can Make your Life a Little Easier

With mountains of dirty clothes, bedding and towels landing in your laundry room each week, it pays to find ways to keep your space organized. You need to have at your fingertips anything that would send you to another room in order to complete your laundry task. Eyeglasses For instance, how about keeping a spare pair of reading glasses in the laundry room? Place a spare pair of drugstore readers in a drawer in the laundry room, or clip the glasses to a wire rack. Then, when you need to read the tag on a new blouse, you don’t have to run to another room to find your glasses. Mending Kit Another tip – keep a sewing kit close at hand. Then, if you see a lose button on a shirt, you can hang up the shirt and tighten the button without missing a beat. You do not need a big sewing kit, but one that has scissors, several spools of thread, needles, buttons, hook and eye sets, skirt hooks and, when all else fails, safety pins. You might also want to try keeping a small, battery operated sewing machine in your laundry room. Then, when you see a split seam in a pair of pants, you can give it a quick, professional repair. The secret is that you should mend clothing when you first notice the problem. You will get far more wear out of it than if you stick that clothing in the back of the closet thinking you will mend it someday. If your laundry room is organized, the “someday” becomes “today.” Washer and Dryer Accessories When clothing lands in the laundry room, the assignment is to return that piece of clothing to its original condition. That sometimes means more than just washing it. How about a fabric shaver that removes the pills that build up on sweaters? These battery-operated devices safely shave just the top layer of fuzz from the fabric. Using a suction function, the shaver sucks the lint and stores it in a bin that you can empty later. The shaver works on wool, cottons and knits, and it will not damage the fabric. To the contrary, your clothing will look as fresh as the day you bought it. Or maybe you occasionally mix up your loads of laundry. The sweatshirt you threw in with a load of towels has come out covered in towel lint. Some might choose to rewash the sweatshirt. But if you have a large lint roller, you can run it over the sweatshirt and pick up whatever lint or debris does not belong there. The large lint roller comes with 60 replacement sheets and a cover. New on the scene of laundry accessories is the Mister Steamy Dryer Balls, which can eliminate the need to iron your clothing. You simply fill one of the 4-inch dryer balls with water and then toss it into the dryer with the load you are drying. As the dryer heats up, steam is released from the ball and the wrinkles in your clothing or bedding are released. There is no need to iron. The dryer balls come in a set of two and work on all fabrics. Before you wash, use a pre-cleaner to get the spots out of your clothing. Some people prefer to wait and see if the spot will come out in the wash, but this can sometimes “set” a stain – making it even more difficult to come out. Instead, use a pre-treater like White Wizard spot remover to get rid of tough stains such as blood, food, paint, wine, coffee or ink before you wash. Simply rub White Wizard on the spot and then throw the article of clothing into the wash. White Wizard is odorless, biodegradable, non-toxic and non-abrasive. Lingerie bags can really save you money and time. Laundry is hard on lingerie and can damage it – and lingerie can damage your other clothing, too. The hooks on bras can easily snag a loosely woven material. Bra straps can get twisted around the rest of the laundry load, stretching the elastic unnecessarily. Instead, pop lingerie into fine mesh laundry bags that protect the lingerie and the rest of the load. They have zippers designed not to snag and they are safe in both the washer and the dryer. Few things are as in need of a good wash than a favorite baseball cap or golf hat. When well worn, caps are dirty and they can give off an awful odor. The answer is a simple and inexpensive cap washer. Designed to save the shape of a billed hat or cap, the cap washer is a plastic frame that holds the hat in place while it goes through one cycle of the dishwasher. When the cycle is done, the cap is clean and still holding its shape. Laundry is a necessity, but it does not have to be drudgery. Spend a few minutes to consider how you can organize your laundry space and take action. A small investment will pay off in big ways.