Having a washer and dryer in your home doesn't always translate to having an organised system for cleaning and storing clothes. When the piles start climbing out of their baskets, the Unclutterer blog recommends making a visit to your local laundromat—the one you probably wrote off as an artifact of the past. By doing all your laundry in one shot, and saving some serious time while you're at it:

Go once to the laundromat, get all of your clothes washed, and then get started on your new laundry routine at home with a clean slate. To complete the laundry bankruptcy plan you can do your laundry yourself, or you can use the Fluff-N-Fold service that most laundromats offer.

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Next time you wipe your PC's hard drive clean and reinstall Windows with that old installation disc, you don't want to connect your fresh, unpatched and vulnerable system to the internet only to download 176 new updates from Microsoft. If your XP installation CD is older than 2004, once your system is online, you'll have to wait for hefty service packs to download, chained to your mouse while pushing the Next button, watching progress bars, and rebooting multiple times. Wouldn't it be better to start your installation, head out to run errands or grab coffee, and come back to an up-to-date system before your system gets online? It's possible, using some free software and a blank disc. After the jump, I'll show you how to create an automated, customised XP installation CD or DVD, that includes Microsoft's official-but-not-released Service Pack 3 for Windows XP.

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US-centric: Hot on the heels of Windows Live Maps' traffic-based directions, Google Maps unleashes its own traffic predictions. To use it, just click the Traffic button on the top of a map and then click the change link to... Read More »

US-centric: Newly-launched travel site Delaycast is a perfect complement to the similarly statistical-minded Farecast, saving you time instead of money by providing estimates on how many minutes your flight will likely be delayed. Enter the airport you're flying from... Read More »

Wired's How To Wiki takes on one of the ultimate stress-creators and time-wasters—airport security, naturally—and offers up a few reasonable suggestions to save time and avoid hassle that you probably haven't thought of. One of the best involves using the best kind of carry-on luggage:

2. Carry a messenger bag. The topside flap gives easy access to your laptop and Ziploc of liquids and gels while the pockets provide plenty of storage for alarm-trippers. As soon as you get in line, tuck your belt, wallet, keys, watch, and phone into the sack.

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Food author and recipe minimalist Mark Bittman follows up on his summer-time list of 101 10-minute meals with a list of 101 appetizers that take 20 minutes or less to whip up. A few of them fudge the time requirements a bit, and a good number require having pre-made ingredients on hand, but the vast majority can be whipped up quickly with only one or two items added to your grocery list. What last-minute appetisers do you keep in your bag of tricks for unexpected guests or holiday entertaining? Open-source your recipes in the comments.

Need to alphabetise something in a jiffy but don't want to fire up Excel and import the data to do it? Head over to The Alphabetizer, a simple but surprisingly useful webapp that quickly sorts any list into alphabetical order. The Alphabetizer can strip HTML from lists, remove duplicates, ignore indefinite articles like "a" or "an", and handle lists separated by new lines, commas, tabs, or any custom delimiter you like. You can even print your list once it's sorted. The Alphabetizer might not be an everyday webapp for you, but it is a useful tool for the right occasion.