Gardening, watering, playing in the sprinklers, driving toy tractors in the dirt, helping dad fix broken down pivots, farming hay – all that times the number of people in our family and we’ve got a whole heck of a lot of laundry to do!
Throughout my motherhood experience I’ve tried several different approaches to tackling the laundry dilemma: doing laundry once a week, three times a week, assigning someone to do it all, having everyone do their own, etc.
Currently our laundry plan looks like this:
- 1 person is assigned the laundry for one month.
- They are in charge of keeping it rotated every day.
- They only have to do bath towels, tablecloths, and kitchen towels.
- Everyone six and older is in charge of washing their own clothes and bed linens on their assigned day.
- Each person is in charge of folding their own clothes and putting it away.
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This plan has been in place for several years because it works for us. It’s been interesting to see the differences in my children’s approach to tackling the laundry even though they are following the same plan. Some kids love to dry all the laundry on a clothesline.
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| I had to capture the rare moment when laundry was completely done! |
If we aren’t caught up on laundry our laundry room turns into a disaster area. It is a small space 8×8 ft. There is only enough space to hold one three bag laundry sorter and an extra hamper.
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| See! No clothes in the hampers!! |
Baskets of laundry are usually spilling out into the hallway waiting to be folded. I dream of the day when we have a larger laundry room with cabinets to hold all the baskets and a counter top to fold clothes on. Until then we are making due with what we have.
How do you do laundry at your house? Do you only wash once a week? Are you in charge? Do your kids wash their own? Do you have a big enough laundry room?
Oh, Laundry! One of my least favorite chores. My kids each have a day where they do their own laundry. If they don’t wash that day, then they don’t have clean clothes until it is their day again. I am not exactly sure where I got the idea, might have been from you! It has been a lifesaver for me. I no longer feel overwhelmed with the laundry. Our laundry room is not huge, but it does have a sink and counter. It would help if I would keep the counter clean from clutter so that we could fold there. Someday…
We do that too! If they don’t wash their clothes tough patooties. 🙂
We wash by bedroom. Oldest child in the room starts the laundry when it’s full. Next oldest switches it to the dryer. Younger ones in the bedroom unload dryer. Each child puts their own away. This means I only wash laundry for mommy, daddy, and the current baby who sleeps in our room. The other bedrooms are:
12yo girl, 7yo girl, 1yo boy.
8yo boy, 5yo boy, 4yo boy, 2yo boy.
We don’t fold, just put away in dressers. Love it!
Towels and bedding – washed as needed by those using them. 🙂
Our children’s assigned days are done by who shares bedrooms too.
I do it all once a week and I’m a sorting nut. I try to imagine what it would be like to just let it all go and throw anything and everything into a load together and not worry about it. How do you ladies do that? Don’t colors bleed and things turn gray? How do you wash a heavy pair of jeans with lighter, more delicate fabrics? Do you just dry and dry the load until the jeans are dry?
I’m also careful about hanging up clothes or folding them nicely and making sure they are put away carefully so everyone is wearing non-wrinkled, nice looking clothes when possible. Am I just a total nutter? Do the clothes really not wrinkle as much as I’m afraid they would? Or is it really not noticeable?
I’d love to have the kids help more but they can’t reach the machines which are up on a built in shelf sort of thing. There’s nothing I can do about that in my house. They probably won’t be able to reach without a ladder until they are teens! Also, the OCD in me has a hard time letting go and allowing everything to be thrown in together and wrinkly as kids don’t know how to be careful about those things.
Anyone have advice on how to just let that go?
I also only wash bedding about once a month or every other month. The sheets just don’t seem very dirty or smelly or anything before then. Is that weird and gross? I can’t imagine trying to keep up with washing all the bedding every single week. And making the beds takes FOREVER- especially bunk beds. How do you people manage it!?
I love the picture of Special Dark in the washer- too cute!
We separate clothes according to what takes longer to dry. Jeans are washed separately and are line dried. Nowadays you don’t usually need to separate whites and colored (except for the reds!) because most clothing are made with colorfast dyes. I don’t care about wrinkly clothes because we live out in the country. We DO iron our clothes for church or when we are going to town. Bedding is washed every other week.
I’m trying to get better at washing sheets more often, but there have been many times when we’ve gone a month or longer. So, now you know at least one other person who doesn’t think that’s weird or gross! There’s no way I could have changed seven beds every single week, and I hate climbing the bunk beds. I had the greatest success at getting the job done quickly when I would put the clean sheets on immediately after removing the dirty ones. Of course, that meant having two sets of sheets per bed, which wasn’t always possible. It was remembering to come back and finish the job that caused part of my problem. Good luck!
I’m one of those who just revels in crisp, clean sheets. I like to change mine weekly, but only change the kids’ sheets every other week. ( I remember my mom doing it that way!) I have two girls and two boys, so that makes it easy for me to just switch off whose sheets I wash each week.
In other laundry areas, since my oldest is only 8, I have the kids help me sort the dirty laundry, and then they each get to put their own clean laundry away. That has actually been really helpful!
I also like to do my laundry on Mondays and Fridays so that I (theoretically!) get a few days off from doing laundry during the week. Of course, that only happens if I’m diligent about actually finishing the job on laundry day! Lol.
I really ought to just see what things look like if I don’t bother so much with the folding and sorting. Sounds heavenly! I love how everyone is sharing how they get their kids to help. I need to do better at that. Laundry is one area where I just want it done and done right and I find it hard to let go and allow the children to help. Cocoa, I love how involved your kids are with laundry and cooking!
Holly, I can totally relate to wanting to keep control of the laundry! That’s why they only “help” at this point! I figure they’re young enough to still be in the training phase. I, too, admire mothers who are willing to let go a little more! 😉
I think laundry is the only thing I have down!!!! And I hate for my system to get messed up. So all laundry is done together but my kids take turns being in charge of keeping it running.
Here’s a post I wrote about laundry on my blog.
http://kassie-justanother.blogspot.com/2012/05/mt-washmore.html?m=1
Good topic. It’s interesting to read how others do theirs.
We have a similar approach. We observed a while back that each person in our family, on average, generates 1 1/2 loads per week (this has gone up with our kids getting bigger). So each week one of the children have a turn doing the laundry. It is a communal affair with everyone doing whatever family laundry needs to be done. Everyone is responsible for putting their own clothes away, although I put away towels, tablecloths etc. I am working on my oldest to do the folding.
Since my oldest daughter (5 yrs) still has a bedwetting problem we make sure she takes care of her own clothes and bedding. We have baskets in each kids room for dirty clothes and one in the bathroom so when they are full the kids are in charge of getting them to the laundry room. I even have my one year old take her clothes to the laundry room (start em young 😉 Once in the laundry room, I get the loads going- only one in dryer one to fold and one to wash per day unless there is bedding. I catch up on the extra loads on Fridays. Then each day I try and get the kids to at least sort and get their clothes back to their rooms. It’s still in the “we are trying to be consistent” phase but its seeming to work. Thanks for the other tips for when my kids are older!
i really really struggle with the laundry. i just dont seem to be able to get on top of it. at the moment i do it all, and iron EVERYTHING! The laundry basket is always overfilling and spilling onto the floor, and i always have a huge pile of ironing. most of us dont have laundry rooms in the uk but that would be my dream. laundry is something that really makes me feel low
When the kids were home, I did laundry Mon-Wed-Fri, and I did it, even when they were teenagers. Our family philosophy was that their work was to be a good student, and since I could stay home, that was just part of my work. We did give them the opportunity to be in charge during the summer so they would know how to do it when they left home. The kids were responsible for bringing their hampers (which we kept in their bedrooms) to the laundry room before leaving for school. I would sort, wash, dry and fold, leaving their piles on the dryer. They were then responsible for putting their clothes away before dinner. It worked for us. Now that they’ve all left home, I only have to do laundry twice a week, and only 2 or 3 loads each time, instead of 4 or 5 or 6. It’s wonderful!
I like to do 1-2 loads each day. My oldest (of 3) generally has wet sheets in the morning, so we start a load each morning. We don’t have a laundry room–only a stackable washer/dryer in a closet off our front room (living/dining room combined). Anyway, our front room general becomes the folding area, unless we have people over, and then it is my bed. At night, my husband reads a chapter out of a book to me (LOVE THIS!) and I will fold anything that hasn’t been finished that day. I try to have everyone put away their own clothes. 4 year old is in charge of blankets and 2 year old is in charge of bathroom and kitchen towels. All with help, of course! It’s just one of my least favorite chores, so I figure it’s a good one to have my boys help me with to make it easier for me.
The more I thought about your post the more I laughed at myself. We have 7 children(ages 6-20). One kiddo off to college(she does her own laundry). Our schedule for laundry is to divide it up in loads and get it done before Sunday or if we have outside plans then get it done before Saturday. All of our children were taught colors at 3-4 by sorting laundry. By 5-7 they learned to separate by color and fabric(ie. dark jeans separate from dark sweaters and long tops). From age 8 and up they can load and unload washer and dryer(I still work the knobs/settings until they are about 10-12. When they are 8 if they don’t bring their laundry to the wash room it doesn’t get done(after one reminder for the 12 and under). We wash bed linens every two weeks and towels weekly. Everybody folds as it takes up the whole kitchen table a few times for folding. Now for the funny part, we have 4 boys who love machines of any kind, so laundry was a fun thing for them(except folding). What we didn’t know until April of this year was that three of the four boys are colorblind. You can imagine why sorting laundry was always checked by mom before it went into the wash:) Now the boys sort by shade rather than color. Most of the time it’s right on but occasionally a hot pink has to be moved out of the dark green pile:)It’s interesting that they can see intensity of colors but not necessarily the actual color.
Oh, that IS funny!
We do laundry Tuesday and Saturday. The 6 year old sorts the kids dirty clothes and either I or one of the other kids sort mine and the hubs. They help to keep it rotated throughout the day. I fold it all on Tuesday night. Poor Saturday’s clean clothes sit in baskets until then. I don’t really like folding… The kids have to put away their clean clothes Wednesday morning. I get to ours eventually…..
I wash once a week allll day and today is that day. I don’t like laundry and so I find I do better to only spend one day on it. I tried the load a day thing and I hated it because I had to do a chore I hated every single day. I wash all day and then I fold all of the clothes. I put them piles on the floor. Each child has 3 piles since they each have three drawers. One pile is tops, one is pants/shorts, and one is pajamas. Then of course they have socks and underwear. When I am done folding the kids have to carry their piles to their drawers and the drawers have to shut (I check when everyone is done). They also carry the baby clothes and put them away. We have a large laundry sorter in the laundry room and so they are already sorted. I am so happy when I am done for the week. I wash sheets monthly to bi-monthly based on needs. We all shower at night so sheets and blankets stay a little cleaner.
I just wanted to add a word of caution about little children helping with laundry. A friend of mine in my ward lost her 2 year old boy in a washing machine drowning accident last year. He had climbed up to help do laundry when she wasn’t looking and he fell in. It is so sad. My friend has really worked on raising awareness of the dangers of washing machines and is working on getting locks on machines as well. Most people never think of a washing machine as such a danger.
Oh yes. The first time I posted the picture of Special Dark in the washing machine my mother called me up and chewed me out. 🙂 I had to assure her it was a closely monitored situation. Some clothes had gotten stuck around the middle thing (what is that called?) and they came and asked if I could get it for them. My son wanted to try to get it out so I let him with my supervision. My SIL has a scar from falling into the washing machine when she was little and almost drowning too. Very scary!
I love a lot of the ideas here! I do most of the washing and drying, but my second son helps a lot with switching the loads from washer to dryer and carrying baskets around for me. I discovered a few months ago though, that when we fold, we turn it into a bit of a game and we sort it into individual piles first – which means they get to throw the clothes into piles (sometimes at each other too), but then they each fold their own piles and are responsible to put their own piles away. They’ve really enjoyed the “sorting” part, so I think we’ll stick with it for a while! 🙂
I guess I must have OCD about laundry too. I do everyones laundry on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The kids will help sort if I ask and they will also rotate if I ask. I do all the folding, but each child is in charge of putting their piles of folded laundry into their proper drawers. I also sort all the clothing into similar colors before I wash. (ie. denims, darks, whites, pinks and purples together, greens, greys, and blues together and yellows and tans together. Sheets and towels are washed in their own loads as well.)
My oldest went to college and didn’t want to do six small loads based on my color coding so she had to learn her own way of color blending. I think she does darks and denim, light colors, amd whites and sheets.
My second would never bring me her clothing to wash, wouldn’t put her pile of folded laundry away…EVER, and had a multitude of special care clothing, so she was given the responsibility of doing her own about six months ago. I am pretty sure she has only washed about once a month and will actually go out and purchase new clothing if she runs out of clean ones. She is trying to buck the system and still thinks I am mean for making her do her own. Tough love can sometimes STINK! Literally. Good job to all of you who help your children be responsible early on.
Every time I read your blog I feel more proud to call you my friend. You are just fantastic. My kids start doing their own laundry at age 12 (some a year or two earlier) and most people are shocked that I have them start so young. 🙂
Please tell me you are coming to Utah for Ryan’s wedding. I would love to get our families together.
I have six children. The oldest turns 10 on Saturday. All of them still need diapers at night but I’m not willing to spend the money so I do laundry all day every day. Literally.
As for my children helping, it is the one chore I can’t handle making them do. They hate it. They loathe it. They think it is child abuse. I don’t mind folding clothes so I fold clothes. My 4 year old folds the rags/bibs/hand towels and my other children help when asked. The kids do all the putting away and gathering up dirty laundry and taking it to the laundry hamper. They also strip their own beds and most can make their own beds.
It is getting better. If I take the kids to the bathroom at 10 and 12, I usually have one or two that is dry in the morning. That helps.
Also, I usually fold at night once I’ve put the kids to bed (all but the baby sleep downstairs in two bedrooms right by the laundry area) and then they know they can’t get out of bed.
Any brilliant suggestions for keeping kids in bed??
Yeah. Use a soft silky scarf or strip of fabric and tie it to their ankle then to the leg of the bed. When they fall asleep then you untie it. We only did this with one daughter who WOULD NOT stay in bed, getting up numerous times no matter what routine we used or how many things we tried to do before she went to bed so she would have no reason to get up. She didn’t complain or cry when we did it, It didn’t last for long and she shows no signs of being scarred by it 14 years later. Maybe not a recommended method, but it worked when we got desperate. It seemed she was just testing us…
I am lazy, LAZY. I do laundry one whole day a week, that’s it. And all the clean socks go in a sock basket and I fold them once a month. I need to make my kids do their own. It’s cheaper though to have me do it. Way too many loads of laundry otherwise.
I agree with you. My boys have to help do the family laundry. Too much time & expense with one person’s laundry.
Oh laundry, with 6 children, it never ended. I don’t mind the washing, it is the sorting of the clean laundry into a gazillion little piles! So I washed by bedrooms, two kids in each room. That way, all the clothes in those batches went back to the same room. When they were about 12, they took over their own. That worked well, except they didn’t sort and their whites were ugh. They didn’t have assigned days, so it seemed our washer and dryer were always going, with not much chance for me to do my own. We did need to replace the dryer belts really often. Turns out, they were putting the youngest in the dryer, he thought it was fun! I hate to iron, and do it as seldom as possible. Shirts are not put in the dryer unless they need 5 minutes to warm out the wrinkles. All are hung immediately. The pants too, are hung as they come from the dryer. I have a shower rod in the laudry room so it is really easy. Linen pants can be laid wet neatly across the dryer. The warm dryer does a great job of ironing by itself. My sister in law had two laundry rooms, one for the kids and one for her, heaven!
I’ve taught the kids how to do it, but I like having the laundry all done in one day and doing it myself. They will pop in and rotate loads for me now and then.
The kids bring their baskets the night before and sort their clothes according to color and fabric type. I put the first load in and set the timer to be done early the next morning.
I put their baskets across from the dryer so as the clothes come out I sort them directly into their baskets, minus their shirts, which I lay across the corner of my basket on the floor. After I put the next wet load in the dryer, I lay out their shirts in individual piles on the counter.
When everything is done, I lay their jeans and their pile of shirts across the top of their baskets and they take them and put them away.
TIME-AND-HEADACHE-SAVING TIPS:
After picking up individual socks and underwear from the washer, then the dryer, then sorting it I came up with this method: The kids put their underwear and socks in two separate zip-up lingerie bags. Then you just have to grab the bag from the washer, shake it a bit to separate the items inside, put it in the dryer then drop it in their basket when dry. I usually pull out the rest of the load when dry and run the bags another 10 minutes or so, to get them thoroughly dry.
There are drying racks you can mount on your ceiling with rods that run up and down like mini-blinds. I have 30 ft. of hanging space for jeans and hang-dry items. It’s awesome!
I try to do one or two loads every day except Sunday. Every morning I take a quick survey of the laundry baskets to see what type of load is most urgent. Of course right now we only have 4 people living at home most of the time, and my oldest daughter usually does her own laundry as needed. When more of the kids were still home and we had job charts, we usually rotated jobs each day and one child would have laundry as their daily chore. For me the hanging up/folding part is the worst, but I hate wrinkled clothes, so I try to do it ASAP.
I’m big on a few things: family service, and well-trained minions from a very young age. So, our four (16 to 5) all help with the whole-family laundry (service… you get to care for everyone, not just your stuff), and they start tiny, with the 2yos helping sort and fold hankies, washcloths, napkins, putting things into and out of the dryer, handing up clothespins and items during line-drying weather, etc. I want to make all four of my laundry lines coated steel cable, but I’m debating leaving one cotton, as it sags far enough for the 5yo and 8yo to reach easily for hanging and bringing in laundry.
We have a tiny house; changing happens in the bathroom, so there’s one hamper there that gets moved to the laundry every day (at least once), and usually we do 2 loads every other day. And by “we”, I mean: the kids. 🙂 The 8yo, with her fantastic Powers of Nag, is particularly amazing at getting the loads truly DONE, because she bosses the bigger minions about hanging things out.
We do Family Fold… I’ll read aloud, and everyone else sorts clothes into People Piles, then folds their own and/or helps someone else fold.
I look at laundry as a necessary family service activity. 🙂
I like how you do family fold. 🙂
I totally agree with you on family service. That’s how we look at ours too. I also love your folding idea, I may have to borrow it.
My kids are still very little, so I do it all. I wash clothes on Monday and Wednesday or Thursday. Tuesday is sheets and towels day. I love clean sheets every week! I always give myself Friday-Sunday off.
Sorting…I have to say that I don’t do much. I have 2 big baskets in the laundry room: one for things that can be bleached and/or washed in hot water, and one for things that can’t. I don’t actually bleach every time, but just in case I should get the urge, the sorting is done. Same for the hot water.
I fold while I watch TV. My 2.5 year old loves to unpack her drawers, so I don’t usually bother to fold her stuff. Also, when I am annoyed with my husband for generating too much laundry in a week, I don’t fold his stuff. I pretend it is because I just don’t have the time, but we both know the truth. 😉
I guess I am weird…but I like doing laundry. It is my favorite chore. I usually do two loads every other day. I sort the dirties, because I check for stains and spots that need treating. After laundry is dry, my kids help out. Sometimes I make sure everything is right-side out while one kid folds pants and pajamas and my other helper hangs dresses and shirts. Sometimes the kids sort out their clothes and take care of their own pile. It just depends, but it is nice to have helpers! My tot’s only laundry chore is to put his dirties in the hamper. This is what works for us, and my kids are 6, 4, 2, and soon to be born. e
Laundry is my favorite chore too so we can be weird together! It drives me NUTS when it is one of my children’s turn and they don’t do it “right” so the laundry room is messy and there are tons of baskets to fold. I love when my turn comes around again (we rotate chores). I love to take clothes out of the dryer in the winter and take them off the clothesline in the summer.
Laundry is also my favorite chore! I think that is because I do it ALL on Monday and it is done for the rest of the week! It always feels great to be done at the end of the day. During the school year I do most of the work, though my kids are always required to put their clothes away neatly. During the summer my kids each get a week to be my helper. The older ones can do most or all of it themselves, the younger ones help me and I teach as we go. I love LOVE the previous idea of “family fold” and doing read-aloud while the kids help fold!
I will admit to being rather OCD about laundry. I love to have things folded or hung neatly and unwrinkled. I want my kids to learn to care for their clothing well! Clothing is a pretty big expense and with 6 kids, I want their clothes to last for years and years! You would all laugh at my sorting system too! I have squeezed 6 sorting hampers along the wall in our tiny laundry room. Above each hamper is a picture with colored stripes that represents each color family. We have light, medium-warm, medium-cool, dark, denim, and white. I kid you not – even my 3 year old can sort her own clothes properly. 🙂
I have five daughters still at home and I haven’t done laundry in years with the occasional load now and again. My kids start helping at 3, by six or seven they are completely capable of doing the laundry and at 12 they are solely responsible for their own clothes. I help with folding and putting away. Once a week I take my full hamper to the top of the stairs and a few hours later, without a word from me, it is returned with clean clothes. I actually don’t think I know how to run my new washer. I may have to ask the girls how should I need to do a load on my own.
I have to say my house is cover with clothes all the time both clean and dirty…I have six kiddos, 8,7,6,3.5 and twin 11 month olds. I literally feel like I could do laundry all day every day. I was doing cloth diapers but just gave that up two weeks ago because I was about to loose my mind. Between homeschool, laundry, dishes, nursing the twins and life something had to go! We have 2 kids in each room two boys, two girls, and then the boy girl twins. When their basket is full the kids are suppose to bring it to the garage to get washed. I don’t sort I buy color catchers from target and throw one in each load. It is money well spent for me. Once the load it done I bring it back to the room it came from to be folder or hung with the kids help! Along the lines of laundry what is an appropriate amount of clothes for a child to have? I have a serious clothes buying problem and I am in the process of trying to simplify our house starting with the volume of clothes. How much clothes do other people’s kids have? What is a reasonable amount? I really want to convince my hubby to have more kids but I’m afraid if I can’t get the laundry under control it is not going to happen!
Oh I forgot to mention my 6 and 3.5 wet the bed almost every night so I am constantly washing bedding. I buy overnight diapers but the almost always leak. Grrrrrrrrr
Its hard when there is such cute clothes, especially for girls, to control buying new ones. I know all about that! We finally had to limit clothes to enough for one outfit a day and four outfits for church. It’s amazing how that little step reduced the amount of laundry to do!
So 365 outfit each 😉
Or did you mean 7?
LOL!! 7 shirts, seven bottoms (any combination of skirts, pants or shorts) Now shoes…..those are an entirely different story!
In theory, sheets don’t seem to get that dirty, but sometimes it’s not the “dirt” that makes them dirty. Mites tend to really build up in sheets and pillows because they really love to feed off of skin flakes. It’s gross to think about, but a person really does shed a LOT of skin regularly, and between the mites and the skin flakes, it really doesn’t take long for sheets to get really germy. This is especially concerning for mites like scabies, which can be transferred from person to person through sheets, especially if a bed is shared. Symptoms from scabies sometimes don’t show up for a few weeks, and by then if the sheets haven’t been changed, they can be very numerous, and it’s a pain to try to get rid of them. I have a hard time remembering to wash my sheets if they don’t “look” dirty, but I try to make myself remember that I don’t always see all of the germs and creatures, skin, oil and grease from my skin (just looking at my iPad screen grosses me out from all of the oils my skin leaves behind) and boogers my kids may have wiped there from their clear runny noses. I think I have just convinced mysef to go do some laundry :(.
You just made me shiver…..yuck! I will be washing the kids’ sheets tomorrow.