With three kids, our washing machine and dryer are used every day. When we give them a rare day off, we end up drowning under a pile of washing. We don’t really have any sort of system – it all just gets bunged it together (yep, darks and whites all go in one wash – in five years we have only ever had one unfortunate colour run incident!). However, there are a few things that you can do to try and make doing the laundry a little bit easier!

1. Keep a note of handy stain removal tips. They are easy enough to find on the internet, but having them printed off and to hand (with all the stuff that you need) means you’re much more likely to deal with that stain straight away.

2. If you use a tumble dryer, pop a dry towel in with wet or damp washing. It dries much quicker, saving time, electricity and money! Websites such as latestdeals.co.uk are great for finding cheap tumble dryers. Alternatively, look for a heated airer.

3. If you have children who are of similar shoe size, bulk buy plain socks in one colour. It saves the hassle of pairing them up and having hundreds of odd socks floating about. It also saves having to sort each child’s own socks out – you can just grab any pair!

4. Use the spin cycle as much as possible on your washing machine. Washing machines are much more economical to use than a drier, so if you can get them out of the washing machine almost dry, you’re going to save yourself time and money!