Tips For Cleaning Your Laundry Room

If you're lucky enough to have a washer and/or dryer in your home (and trust me, I remember the days when I didn't and did a little dance of joy when I finally got one) you want to keep the space clean. Here are tips for cleaning your laundry room to keep it looking its best all the time.

The reason is that not only is it more pleasant to wash your clothes in a clean space, but you need to keep your tools in their best condition.

To help you with these tasks I've gathered tips from several of my blogging friends around the web to get all the major parts of your laundry room cleaned up today.

The two biggest "tools" in your laundry room are your washer and dryer. It's next to impossible to actually get your family's clothes clean if you don't have clean machines so the first step in the spring cleaning challenge, as it relates to your laundry room, is to clean those two major appliances.

Task 1: Clean Your Washing Machine

The first task is to clean your washing machine. Technically you should do this every month or two, but this is a good opportunity to do a deep cleaning, or start the habit of a more frequent cleaning of this appliance.

With all machines, but especially HE varieties, the drum can get soap scum, hard water build up, and can develop a stink caused by bacteria or fungus from the damp environment over time, and regular cleaning stops these problems.

Here's a couple of links that share exactly how to clean your machine to keep it both sanitary and smelling good:

• Ask Anna Mosely has some detailed tips for cleaning both a top loader and an HE machine;


• Clean and Scentsible also shared how to clean your front loader;


• And here's my instructions for cleaning and sanitizing your machine.

Task 2: Clean Your Dryer

Next, you should clean your dryer. There are several parts of this task including wiping out the drum itself, but also clearing the lint from the trap and hose, and also doing a quick scrub of the actual lint filter.

All of these lint related cleaning tasks not only help the efficiency of your machine, but are also very important tasks for safety to help prevent fires. So definitely do this at least every spring cleaning, if not more frequently!

Here are some links that give you instructions for how to do all these different tasks:

• Clean and Scentsible shared tips for cleaning the lint trap and hose of your dryer; as does my article about often forgotten places to clean inside your house.

Dryer Vent Cleaning Kits {Referral Links}





• Ask Anna Mosley has a thorough post on cleaning your dryer knobs, inside the machine, and an idea for what to do if your dryer is squeaking;


• And if you've had a dryer mishap I've gathered tips for cleaning your dryer of things such as gum or removing melted crayons from the drum (oh yes, these things happened!)

Task 3: Start A Laundry Schedule

If the first two tasks are all that you've got time for during this challenge that's more than enough. But if you want to reboot your whole laundry process while you're getting a fresh start the next step I suggest is creating or sticking to a laundry schedule or routine.

A routine sounds like it might chain you to your washing machine, and consist of drudgery, but I know from personal experience that once I started using a schedule I felt much more free than I ever had before, at least where the laundry was concerned.

Here are a few posts that can help you with setting up a routine:

• I Dream of Clean suggests washing one load of laundry each morning as a routine;


• If you want other ideas as well, check out Home Storage Solutions 101's four questions to ask when creating your family's laundry schedule. (There's a free printable laundry schedule you can grab as well!)


• Finally, here are tips for how and why to make a weekly schedule for your laundry from the sister site, Household Management 101. This includes a round up of real life schedules from lots of different types of people, so you can find an example schedule that will work for you.

Also, don't forget to check out Clean Mama's 5 steps to make sure you're doing laundry the right way.

Task 4: Organize Your Laundry Room

The final task of this laundry room spring cleaning challenge is to organize the room.

The organization, along with a nice clean space, really can take a task that many people find drudgery and turn it into something pleasant to do.

Here are several articles which can give you ideas for organizing your room, whatever its size and no matter you store in there.

• Clean and Scentsible gives lots of tips for organizing this room;


• Home Storage Solutions 101 also has step by step instructions for organizing your laundry room;


• Finally, I Dream of Clean shared how to organize a laundry closet.

Top photo courtesy of ...love Maegan

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CAUTION: This website is provided for informational purposes only. It is provided as is, without warranties or guarantees. Some stains and messes just won't come out, and are permanent. Further, some cleaning methods can harm your item, so if what you want to clean or launder is sentimental or expensive call a professional. See disclaimer of liability for more information.