12 + Laundry Hacks For The Busy Parent

Disclaimer: In exchange for writing this post, I received gifts from ESPRO Sports Cleaner. All opinions and before/after pictures are my own.

Family laundry. It is like an entity unto its own. Despite my best efforts, it’s always there. Though I don’t imagine it will get any better once my kids are in sports and other activities, I do have two toddlers and it is summer. There isn’t a load of laundry that doesn’t have ample grass, blood, melted ice cream, and dirt stains on it. It just comes with the territory. When we moved into our new home two months ago, I was thrilled to have my laundry room upstairs and have one-year-old appliances. Score! Only problem, they are the cheapest of cheap. My washer sucks. Bad. I have been washing clothes with more detergent than ever, really making sure I haven’t filled the washer too much, and have ended up with about a third of a load of still-stained wet clothes. Argh! Already the bain of my existence, our laundry situation has quickly became my most loathed enemy.

In an attempt to maintain a healthy heart rate while cleaning our clothes, I have come up with and googled different laundry hacks. In the process, I found ESPRO Sports Cleaner. Developed by a football coach, this cleaner was formulated to eliminate sports odours and stain treat blood, sweat, grass, dirt, and clay stains. Safe on all fabrics, my concerns about eco-friendly products were resolved in that ESPRO Sports Cleaner does not contain any bleach, butyl, phosphates, ozone depleting solvents, petroleum, or chlorine.

Once I had the cleaner, it was just a matter of testing it out. It recommends spraying fabrics and then letting them sit for about two minutes. Also, rubbing the spray in with a brush or other medium helps increase effectiveness.

I don’t really have the patience for that, so I gave it a try simply spraying and washing. In the week I’ve used it, I’ve been thrilled with how it’s worked on sweaty running shoes, my husband’s sports equipment, and every single stain I put it up against. My son had chocolate sauce on his shorts and t-shirt from a sundae, my father-in-law had a stain from chicken wings on his shorts, my son got a bleeding nose all over the same outfit that previously had chocolate sauce on it, and my daughter had grass and dirt stains all over an outfit.

It worked PERFECTLY on all of these items that I did not launder immediately or soon after they were stained. My daughter had a shirt that was badly dirt stained, was washed before, and made it into the dryer still stained. In just spraying and washing it, ESPRO got about 95% of the dirt stains off of it. My plan is to spray it again and actually let it soak next time 🙂

Click here to enter to win your own prize pack containing one 32 oz. spray bottle, travel sized spray bottle, wipes, and two microfibre clothes from ESPRO Clean!

Without further ado, here are my 12 Laundry Hacks For Busy Parents including some great uses for ESPRO Sports Cleaner!

12 Laundry Hacks For Busy Parents

1. Have different laundry bins in your laundry room to sort washes | Idea from Thrifty Little Mom

2. Spot treat all common stains with ESPRO Sports Cleaner.

3. Use standard hairspray on ink stains. 

4. For stubborn sweat stains, use ESPRO Sports Cleaner or make your own solution using one part Dove Liquid Dish Washing Soap and one part Hydrogen Peroxide. Then scrub with a cleaning brush. See entire how-to here.

5. Make you own eco-friendly laundry detergent with borax, baking soda, bars of soap, and washing soda | For a how-to including how to make washing soda from baking soda, click here. 

6. Wash everything on cold. This will save on your electricity bill, is greener, and won’t set stains that don’t come out on the first wash.

7. Use vinegar to set the colour in your jeans or other darks that may run or bleed. Pour two cups of white vinegar into a small load. Let it soak for about 30 mins, then wash normally.

Click here for all sorts of uses and reasons to use vinegar in your laundry.

 8. Use 1/3 cup of Hydrogen Peroxide in your washes as an eco-friendly, colour safe bleach.

9. Have multiple people doing the laundry? Use a dry erase marker to indicate what items in the wash cannot go in the dryer | Idea from Mother’s Niche

10. Any clothes that come out of the dryer stained (sometimes I miss spot treating them), use ESPRO Sports Cleaner, brush with a cleaning brush or even the garment itself, let stand for two minutes, then re-wash.

1.  11. Stop doing laundry every. single. day. by laundering bigger loads, drying, taking items out of the dryer and lie them flat. I use an oversized Rubbermaid container, remove each article of clothing and lay it flat within the container, then when the kids are asleep and all of the laundry has been cleaned, my husband and I then team up to fold all of it in front of the TV. The reason this is advantageous is that we are not stuck folding and laundering non-stop. We only fold once or twice per week. Then we put everything away in one fell swoop, and can (almost) forget about the laundry for a few days. Also in folding when the kids are in bed, the clothes actually stay folded for more than a micro-minute.

Bonus: Take a mesh bag with a drawstring and wash lots of toys in one fell swoop!

Have any laundry hacks you’d recommend? Please share them and I will be sure to include them at the bottom of this post. Also please check out my Laundry & Cleaning board on Pinterest for more great tips from other parents 🙂

Happy cleaning,

xo Alana