I never dreamed that after having kids laundry would be so consuming. 4 people in this house and we have so much laundry! After years of trying to come up with a system, I finally found something that works for me. I want to share it with you today. It might not work for you but maybe it will some some.
I don’t know if this is good or bad but I have my laundry room right across the hall from the master bedroom. Like I said, I don’t know if that’s good or bad. It’s close which is nice, but it’s close, so I see the clean or dirty clothes sitting there. This year I’ve been using a basket system. My kids both have a cute hamper for dirty clothes. Once a week, or as needed, I will have my daughter bring me the hampers to put them in the laundry room. I will sort the clothes (whites/darks) in our laundry room baskets. I leave the empty hampers in the hall and she will take them back later on or right then. Throughout the week as I do laundry (or rewash the load I forgot about) I will sort all the nice clean clothes into baskets. Each person in our house has one. (Even my husband. He puts his own clothes away!) I sort or sometimes I make it a game and we all sort clothes. Even the 2 year old can help sort, or make a disaster in 2 seconds- it depends on his mood! After sorting the baskets are ready to go. Each member is responsible for emptying their basket (I help the 2 yr old) and then they must return the basket to the laundry room for the next round later one.
Sometimes I wait until their clean clothes basket is sort of full, then we go put away. Otherwise we’d be putting away clothes every single day. I’ve left more responsibility to my daughter. If she wants to dig out of her clean clothes basket, instead of putting away right then, that’s her choice. Sometimes I’m nice Mommy and I go help her put away because the child has endless clothes!
That’s my system. As far as actually washing the clothes, I do it when I can. I’ve tried before doing 1 load of wash a day. It worked for maybe 1 day! One thing I do try and keep up with is I don’t start a new load of clothes of something is in the dryer. I ALWAYS empty the dryer first then start a new load. This keeps me for having clothes sitting in the wash while I wait on the dryer.
I think that if I had a nice, big laundry room I’d definitely do better at laundry. Like this, room. Isn’t it so pretty? I just know that if I had a big laundry room with a pretty chandelier I’d for sure get it all done! Right?!?
Now I’d better get back to laundry and sorting!
Life Breath Present says
Sometimes it’s difficult to find a system that works for us. I know, currently, I have a system that works for me. I wash 2-3x/week. We don’t sort darks/lights, instead washing everything together in cold water. Certain things may be exclusively washed together, but not always. In this way, I can get all of our clothes done in 2 or 3 days, depending on our needs. And since Baby Boy is practically out of diapers, things have been nice. Yet, with the new baby coming, my guess is I’ll be doing more loads of laundry and thus a new schedule/system will need to happen lol 🙂