Laundry Solutions for Dirty Laundry in Small Spaces
Published: November 11, 2024 by Nicole Dieckman
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Use Divided Hampers. Period.
Closets are small, and laundry rooms are typically pretty small, too, so most of us need dirty laundry storage ideas for small spaces. I’ve lived in homes of all sizes: apartments, condos, small houses, and big houses, and I’ve had to do laundry in all of them. Never have I thought, you know what I want to decorate this room with, my dirty laundry. And I can tell you without any questions that divided hampers are the way to go. Either one hamper that has three divided parts, or three hampers that you can pick up individually placed side by side, like pictured above. Divided hampers make getting your laundry done infinitely easier.
I’ll never forget laundry day when I was a kid. My mom would separate all the laundry on the living room floor into darks, lights, whites, blacks, delicates, towels, and sometimes even reds had their own pile. Then we’d spend the whole day at either the laundromat or my grandparents’ house.
So when I got my first place, that’s what I did. Separated all the piles onto the floor and then washed each one. Can we talk about all the extra time it takes to separate your laundry on laundry day? Or how you have to wait 1-2 hours for one load to be finished? The problem with this one basket, piles on the floor, strategy is that most of us don’t have a full day to dedicate to all the laundry in the house every week. Maybe the world moves faster, or we’re all too busy, but I know I don’t have an entire day every week to dedicate to laundry.
Cue the divided hamper, stage left.
The divided hamper is a great solution for dirty laundry storage ideas for small spaces. Even better, it prevents you from making piles all over your bedroom or living room floor, and worst-case scenario: those piles are left there because you have to go in the middle of doing laundry.
How to Separate Your Clothes
I’m also here to tell you that you don’t need that many piles. Suppose you’re a single person or a person living with just a partner. In that case it’s easier than running a household with multiple kids. So, I’ll separate this category into: “Kids” and “No kids.”
No Kids Laundry Solution:
You can put your basic divided laundry hamper in your closet, bathroom, or bedroom, wherever you undress most, and it fits nicely. Some people keep their baskets in their laundry room. If this works for you, great, but most of the time, those people end up with their clothes on their bathroom or bedroom floor, because they aren’t undressing in their laundry room. This is also why I love the divided hampers that have removable baskets or bags.
In this divided basket, you have colored, black, and white clothing. If you have a fourth compartment, delicates. Otherwise, you may need a small basket to set on top of or beside the divided hamper for delicates. All of these need to be washed differently. Black clothing needs cold water and white clothing needs bleach. Delicates need a gentle cycle and hang dry. I will die on the hill that my mother never needed all those piles. I wash all my colored clothing together, and they’re all fine. Not including delicates. Once in a while, before I wised up and just stopped buying red clothing, there would be a red piece of clothing that stained my other clothing. I’m just going to say this: why do you have clothing that will cause you that much trouble while doing laundry? Get rid of it. Hot take.
If you live in a small space, like an apartment without kids, you don’t need a towel basket. Wash your towels when they’re dirty and hang them back up.
With Kids Laundry Solution:
If you have a partner and kids, you have a lot more laundry, and you might need our printable cleaning schedule to keep up with getting it all done every week.
Here’s how you’re going to do it.
You will have your basic divided laundry basket with a delicate basket either incorporated or beside it. Personally, I have a divided basket that has a small delicates basket that sits on top of it. The divided hamper will be colors, blacks, and whites.
Each of your kids will have either one basket in their closet or, if you have space, their own divided basket.
You’ll probably also need a towel basket in your laundry room because, for some reason, kids go through many towels. A cute woven native basket is perfect for this!
The black and the white hampers usually fill up less quickly, and so I generally take my hamper section to each of the kids’ rooms and add their black laundry or white laundry to that hamper before I take it to the wash.
Each kid, plus the adults, gets their own color load. I’m usually the only one with delicates. If you need a dry cleaning bag, hang that in the closet or laundry room.
Here’s how you’re going to list your laundry on the weekly chore section of the cleaning schedule printable.
- Black Laundry
- White Laundry
- Adult Colors
- Kids’ Colors
- Delicates
- Towels
If you complete each of those chores once a week, you’ll always be on top of your laundry.
Save our home page to your home screen and come back to our weekly printable NestKeepr cleaning schedule to give routine to keeping your home clean! Happy Nesting!
