How to Organize Your Laundry

Well, it's Monday again. Time to face the mountainous pile of laundry. I used to dread laundry day. It seemed as if I could never even get the clothes sorted let alone washed, dryed and folded. Then, one day, I came across a tip that revolutionized the laundry chore for me - hire someone to do it. No, I'm just kidding. What I did find was a recommendation to get one tall laundry basket for each of the loads that you normally do. That meant I went out and bought four bins, one each for light, dark, towels and cold water laundry. It took a while to train the kids (and even my husband) which basket to put what laundry in, but once I did, it was so much easier to approach laundry day because the laundry was already sorted. All we have to do is grab one basket and drag it to the laundry room. It also makes it easy to see when one load is getting really full and might need to be done ahead of schedule.


As you know, every year circumstances and family structure change and so do a lot of other things, including how we handle our chores. Now that I have older children, I assign one child a year-long tour of duty to learn how to wash the laundry. We wash one type of load each day: Monday is light, Tuesday is dark, Wednesday is towels, Thursday is cold water, Friday is work clothes and Saturday is sheets and blankets. The child in charge of washing is responsible for starting the load and changing it over to the dryer. Three other children are each assigned a load that they will fold (even the little kids help with this by folding towels, washclothes and underwear). I would like to tell you that each load is folded and put away the day that it is washed, but I can't. Instead what usually happens is that by Wednesday night we are all clammoring for more socks and underwear so that is the night everyone sits down with their respective bin and folds the clothes. The folding child is also responsible for placing everyone's folded laundry on their respective beds. At which point I would like to tell you that the person whose clothes they are immediately puts them away so as not to confuse clean from dirty laundry, but I can't. (Okay, I know I'll get grief for that one: two of my kids put their clean stuff away, the other five do not!)


Even if you don't have kids old enough to be in charge of washing and drying and folding, I found that splitting it up like this does make it much more managable. Having a set day for each load makes it easy to make sure that no one runs out of anything important. I'm rarely behind on my laundry and I never have to face a mountain all in one day. For now, this system works very well for us. Hopefully it will help someone else, too.


God Bless!