Laundry. It’s the bane of our existence. Whether you’re in a large family with growing kids or single—we all, with few exceptions, pretty much feel the same way about this one. I do wonder: if we all hate doing the laundry, then why do we talk about it so much?

Well, let’s talk. There is some good news out there!

The rules of good time management apply to Laundry. As usual, if you break the tasks in to “manageable parts”, you’ll have a much easier time with it all. I have a friend who has 5 kids. Each kid has their own day of the week that their laundry gets washed, dried, folded and put away. Impressive!

Some people, like me, prefer to do it all in a day. I start early and end late for my family of 5 but it’s all out of the way then, not permeating my whole week. Plus, if you do it all in a day, you actually use less energy in your dryer, because it gets heated up, stays heated, and runs more efficiently.

Ask for help and divide the tasks. Everyone in the family wears clothes, gets them dirty and needs them cleaned. Assign tasks to everyone in the household along the way. In my house, it was so great to get the point where all my kids were old enough to put their cleans clothes away—hurrah, I don’t do that anymore!

The products on the market today work better than ever. However, much as the manufacturers would have you believe that one miracle product can do it all, you really should have multiple products to get the job done. Here are some of my favorites:

• Seventh Generation for everyday laundry (non-toxic, zero-phosphorus) • Tide for the tough stains (See photos—it really works!)

• Oxyclean for stains that even Tide can’t tackle. • Win Detergent for athletic wear (You must try this—it will save your workout clothes from the perma-stench that builds up after a while.) • Downy Wrinkle Release for the blouse that’s been sitting in the pile on the chair a bit too long.

The laundry organization products can help too. The home organization section at Target, adjacent to the Laundry and Cleaning aisles is full of great tools for storage and sorting. I have three bins—one each for whites, mediums and darks—and my kids have to bring their hampers down and sort their dirty clothes into one of those bins if they want their clothes washed.

Two other quick tips:

1. Train your kids, or yourself, that not everything needs to get washed after every wearing. We call it “College Laundry” at our house…you know, like when you could be lazy about household chores. Often times, things like sweatshirts/ pants, pajama pants—things that only get worn around the house for a few hours at a time—can be tossed in the dryer on low heat with a dryer sheet for 15-20 minutes and they are good to go.

2. Only wash your blue jeans/ denim/ dungarees every 3-4 wears. This helps keep the fabric closer to new and that special indigo “wash” just as you bought it.

Don’t forget, if you’re raising kids at the moment, that this really is a skill they need to know before they leave the house. You can start young children early by having them help you sort clothes by color, match up the socks, etc. My 10th grader does his own wash now—and, you wouldn’t believe how this cuts down on what ends up in the dirty clothes hamper to begin with.

So, let’s talk. Share your tips with us—there always seems to be a better way to tackle Wash Day! And, I know there are some of you out there who actually like doing the laundry…please share some of your joy with the rest of us, it might rub off on us!

Sarah Nicoli is founder and owner of dotmine dayplanners, the fashion meets function dayplanners, based in Ann Arbor. For the past 10 years, she’s learned a whole lot about time management and life balance from her best teachers—her kids, her dogs and her customers. She can be reached at snicoli@timemine.com.