How I Conquer My Family's Laundry
Photo credit: Dan Gold on Unsplash
When I tell people that I don't hate doing laundry, they figure it's because I'm a professional organizer. And yes, there may very well be some connection between enjoying this duty and the organizing gene. It probably has to do with all the sorting and categorizing, because oh how we organizers love to sort and categorize! However, my laundry situation has gotten decidedly more complicated, as well as just more, since growing my family (husband plus three daughters). Along the way I've developed some tricks for keeping on top of this chore and offer them to help you and your family:
My daughters share a room and a hamper. I wash all their clothing together, then they help sort, fold and put away. If they had separate rooms I would do one load per daughter/room as it just saves so much time not having to sort.
This folding board helps a lot and my girls love it because they helped make it. All you need are some good scissors, cardboard and duct tape. The trick is to decide what the ideal size is to fit in your drawer and model the board after that.
My girls using their homemade folding board.
To keep my daughters on task and spend some time together, I will read to them while they sort and fold. Or sometimes we'll take turns asking Alexa to play our favorite songs. We all love music so this gives us plenty of time to get a clean load put away!
I split my husband's and my dirty laundry into regular and heavy duty, which is what our washing machine calls our two most used cycles, and run these two loads either when we're running low on something or when our hamper is full. Sometimes I'll save my more delicate items for a gentle cycle, sometimes I just throw them in with the regular wash. So far so good.
I wash all towels together in one load. The same goes for sheets.
Photo credit: raw pixel on Unsplash
When I'm done sorting clean laundry and inevitably find an extra sock, (some say have had their mates reincarnated as tupperware lids that don't fit any of the household's containers...) I put them in a bin in my laundry room labeled "lonely". Every so often I'll go through them and find a few pairs that match up.
We only have two laundry baskets, so once things get taken out of the dryer they have to be put away before that basket is needed again. What a great practical application of the Less is More concept!