How to wash your bedding during quick turnovers

I learned a few tricks from my cleaners about handling laundry on quick turnovers. Laundry is always the bottleneck, so it has to be done well. Picking the right wash cycle, detergent, additives and machine makes a big difference.

Start laundry first

Strip the beds and gather the towels as soon as you walk in, and get the first load running before anything else. Every other task happens while the machines run.

Choose a short, hot wash cycle

If your bedding is 100% cotton, you can use a hotter cycle. Hot water sanitizes and removes stains and body oils better than cooler water. With the right additives, a short hot cycle is usually enough, and that makes all the difference when time counts. Check the care tags first.

Use bleach on whites

For anything white, add regular bleach. It adds cleaning power, keeps everything white, and sanitizes, which lets you keep the cycle short. Clorox recommends about 1/4 to 1/3 cup in a high-efficiency (HE) washer. Always follow the label on your bottle and use your washer’s bleach dispenser.

Use a sanitizer on colors

For anything that isn’t white, like kitchen towels or the dark washcloths you leave out for makeup removal, use a non-bleach laundry sanitizer. I use Lysol Laundry Sanitizer. It goes in the fabric softener compartment or straight into the rinse cycle, and it needs to stay in the rinse for 16 minutes to work.

Dry on high heat

Try different dryer settings to see what works best with your model. For 100% cotton, higher heat is fine, and it shortens drying time, which shortens the whole turnover.

Skip Febreze and similar sprays on the bedding. They smell cheap, and guests may read them as covering something up. Clean linen should smell like clean linen.

How to keep sheets from balling up

Sheets that twist into a knot come out of the washer soaking wet and come out of the dryer still damp in the middle. A knotted load can also throw the washer off balance, which can add time. A few habits help:

1. 1Don’t overload. Sheets need room to move.
2. 2Load sheets loosely. In a top loader, drop them in loosely around the agitator, not in one heap.
3. 3Split the set. Wash the fitted sheet in one load and the duvet cover or flat sheet in another, mixed with smaller items like pillowcases and hand towels.
4. 4Close duvet covers. Zip or button them before washing so pillowcases don’t end up trapped inside.
5. 5Contain the corners. Tuck one corner of the fitted sheet into another so the elastic doesn’t grab everything else.
6. 6Shake before drying. Shake each sheet out before it goes in the dryer. Halfway through, check the corners and untangle anything that has balled up.
7. 7Use wool dryer balls. They help keep sheets separated and don’t add fragrance.

What this looks like in my rental

Always have a backup

Keep spare linen on hand in case something is too stained to save, or a tight turnover doesn’t leave time to wash everything. That sometimes happens when guests use a lot of towels. I keep a good stock of backup linen, and for the worst case, I also keep bags from a trusted laundry pickup service.

A cleaner who knows about a same-day turnover in advance can plan the laundry around it. SheetDay highlights same-day turnovers on your cleaner’s calendar, and you can add notes like where the spare linen is kept. Here are five ways to share your calendar with your cleaner.