No matter how much laundry you do, it still seems to pile right back up. There might not be a way to make laundry fun, but you can make it easier.

Always run full loads for maximum efficiency, both in energy and in effort on your part. That's right, the smart way is to put off your laundry until you can run a full load. Look at that, you just reduced how many loads you have to run.

Front-load washers also make it easier to load and unload — no lifting or trying to reach the clothes way down at the bottom. As an added bonus, they use less water and energy to get clothes equally clean.

Some washers can be programmed to start running overnight and finish as you get out of bed in the morning. Some smart washing machines automatically dose detergent at appropriate intervals and sense the weight of loads to determine total cycle duration. So when it finishes, you know you have clean clothes ready to go into the dryer. And, the dryer may be equipped with technology to sense when the load is dry to avoid wasting energy or other ill effects of over-drying clothes.

So laundry is still laundry, but at least you're doing it a little smarter than before.