A Reader asks:
Am I the only one going crazy with laundry??? I need some ideas for taming the laundry beast. I only have 3 children (so far) but they are all fairly young — 6, 4, and 2. If I don’t stay on top of the laundry, it gets out of control and I get overwhelmed. When I get overwhelmed, I find reasons to put off folding it all. Then it just gets worse! Do my kids have too many clothes? I’m wondering how other mothers approach the clothing/laundry problem.
Hmmmm, are you the only one going crazy with laundry? Most definitely not. I get loads (I kill myself) of email about laundry. But I think you hit upon the answer right there in your own question when you say, “If I don’t stay on top of the laundry, it gets out of control and I get overwhelmed.”
Memorize your own words, my friend, and make them your personal laundry mantra. With a family of your size, doing one load a day should be more than sufficient for staying on top of the laundry beast. If it isn’t, I would say that your kids are probably changing too often and putting clean clothes in the hamper. Find that out first. But then, in order for one laundry load a day to be sufficient, you will have to actually do it. All the way to the closets and the dresser drawers.
I am guessing that you hate to do laundry (a real reach, right?). But unless you manage to strike some kind of awesome deal with your husband and snooker him into taking on the beast himself, you will have to give yourself a bit of an attitude adjustment here.
A huge part of beating down the laundry beast for me was just coming to terms with the idea that I was going to be doing laundry pretty much every day for as far into the future as I could see. And that it would never truly be “done.” Accept that the laundry is a smelly, ugly, thankless, never-ending job and that it’s gloriously all yours. At least for this season in your life. And remind yourself that completing that one load a day — all the way to the closets and the dresser drawers — is a gift you give to yourself. If you do it, you will have peace of mind, a sense of accomplishment, and (here’s the best part) clean clothes! Say it with me now: If I don’t stay on top of the laundry, it gets out of control and I get overwhelmed.
And finally, to further prove the eternalness of the laundry beast and to let you know you are not alone in your loathing, here’s a link to a post I wrote almost three years ago when I was being a bit of a baby about the laundry. All right now others, tell us how you tame the beast.
All "light" colored laundry goes straight into the washer when dirty. When the washer is full, I run it, and dry and fold right away. I do sheets, towels, and darks separate. This is a system that works well for us. It takes out the extra step of gathering the laundry from all around the house. My three year old tosses his clothes in the washer when they’re dirty, I just have to be careful he doesn’t get reds or darks in there. We are a family of five (kids ages 3,2, and 2 months), and my children do change clothes multiple times a day- it’s a battle that I’ve chosen not to fight.
I start a load every morning before breakfast, move it mid-morning, dry over lunch and fold after lunch clean-up. I did by plastic tubs for sorting the folded kids clothes into so they can carry them upstairs and put it away themselves. Older ones help the younger ones put theirs away so it isn’t too overwhelming for anyone.
FUNNY!
I was once told to limit each child’s amount to 10 outfits total.
Use lots of Tide detergent and bleach!
I would love to do this but so many people are generous with their clothes handing them over and I just replace clothes constatnly….probably givign my young 5 kids the wrong idea that they get new clothes all the time! whopps!
Wow! I’m shocked at how many people do laundry every day. I’m with Jane who does it once a week – sometimes twice in the winter when the clothes are so bulky. I also like to fold at the end of the day, and everyone puts their own stuff away as I’m folding. Or if it gets too late, I fold while I’m watching something on TV (a rare treat) and put them in baskets per room and the kids put them away in the morning. We limit the # of outfits they have which serves two purposes: they conserve clothing, and they can manage to keep their drawers neater. And my very exciting news now is that (with #6 on the way and the old washer getting a hole in the tub) I just got a 4.0cu.ft. frontloader and the dryer to match!! How awesome is that?? But seriously, for me, keeping it to one or two days a week prevents me from feeling like I’m always doing laundry, and it is managable:-)
Start training them young to do their own wash. My son is 13 and has been doing his for 2 years. He gets a little help with folding :). My four-year-old knows to put his in the Hamper after his bath. Since there are only 4 of us if I do a wash a day that keeps us up to date. My mother always said, when you are at home with little children, if you can get dinner on the table and underwear in the drawer, that’s the basics. Anything else you can get done is a bonus 🙂
Ok, help! Am I the only one who has had their laundry system derailed by a bedwetter? I used to do laundry twice a week and it worked great. Now I have to do laundry every day, and that’s just the pajamas & sheets. I feel like I never have time for the other clothes.
Any tips for this (laundry wise, I mean — we’re working on the wetting issue and I don’t want to change the whole topic here!)
Your 6 year old might be old enough to help fold the towels(except the bath towels, she did these because they were kinda big to fold when you are that small), around that age my mother passed that job on to me, then later my brother (we also got the underwear and socks to fold when we were about 7). Once we were both old enough we would alternate which we did. I have a feeling we got these jobs bc especially the underwear takes more time to fold but lets face it, if they are a bit wrinkled in the folding who cares. Personally its nice to be able to take stuff out of the dryer put it in a basket and tell someone else they need to fold it, it always makes moving that load of laundry easier in my opinion. 😉
I have a 13 month old and one on the way. Our biggest problem is—my husband. He is a chef who has to wear clean uniforms every day. And unfortunately, the laundry has to be done at home. He has a bad habit of using bleach when not necessary and leaving his clothes in the machine, making me unload it and then re-load it with mine or my daughter’s clothes (he has stains sometimes, that I don’t want to know what they are!). He is sometimes too helpful with laundry and I’ve had a few items fall victim to hot cycle washes and the bleach monster. I am adament he not touch my daughter’s clothes.
As for baby clothes, I have found that with a child learning to feed him or herself, sometimes you don’t have enough clothes. Even with a fully covering front bib, my daughter can destroy an outfit when feeding herself. I’ve had days where it has been 2 or three loads between all the outfits she goes through and I go through helping her at meal times and my husband’s clothes. Then there were the breastfeeding days with blow-out diapers…
I’ve come to appreciate laundry as something I don’t do, but accomplish. It’s like climbing Everest, it seems like you will never get to the bottom of the basket, but you feel so good when you do!
I’ve done a load a day/every other day since my youngest was 6 months old and I discovered Flylady. Getting over my need for laundry to be "done" helped my attitude. It is perpetual. I got rid of excess clothing so that drawers aren’t stuffed. This made it easy for 14, 11 and 5 y.o. to put away their own clothes. My youngest has put away her own clothes since she was 4. Before that one of her older sibs took care of putting away her clothes. My 11 y.o. son still hangs his little sister’s dresses for her.
We have a very small house. One thing I like is having a stacked washer-dryer in the kitchen. I am never lonely when I fold and children can easily come collect their folded wash. Seeing it there reminds me to do the wash/move things to the dryer/fold and put away.
P.S.-When we were in an apartment and I had to walk to the condo’s laundry room I only washed once per week, but even then I folded straight from the dryer. It just simplifies things.
In 28 years of marriage I can’t begin to count the loads I have done. I was a Mom who washed diapers as well and that was never as pretty as my babies nice clear bottoms. In the recent times I have found it best to do a light load and a dark load every other day. It works better than one load a day because my children are grown and even though there is only one at home now she can do her laundry on the days I don’t. I actually like laundry. There is something satisfying about taking something ugly and smelly and making it clean and sweet and folded for the person who wears it! Sometimes that person is me.Cheers
Hey MJ. I wrote a silly comment before. Yes bedwetters can derail the whole system, and they add two to three extra loads a day (every day) depending on how many you have. And I had that for a couple of years. They do grow out of it.
I would do the sheets, blankets etc. from the wet bed first to completion, and at good point in the day (sometimes right before bedtime), I would put them right back on the bed and you can lay out the pajamas at the same time — No folding or putting away.
After the bed wetting laundry, put in a regular load. If you don’t get to dry it that day, you can throw it in the dryer the next morning when the bed wetting laundry comes again. You can fold and put away the regular load while the bed wetting laundry is drying.
I have found that I was more on top of laundry when there were one or more wet beds every morning because I had to get it done, or they would all be sleeping in my bed come evening.
What overwhelms me is the sorting & folding. I teach my kids to sort @ 4.5/ 5, and each kid folds his own clothes & puts them away beginning at age 6. Even the 3-yr-old helps. He folds washcloths and puts them away, and is delighted to be able to help like the big kids. (He has been known to unfold his pile just to be able to continue working with everyone else.)
I wash twice a week and on those nights, the kids sort & fold while I read to them. If the story is engaging, none of us really minds anymore.
Laundry is my favorite "chore". And my dryer is currently in our garage, unhooked, because we only have 90 amps in our old house, all of which are accounted for somehow. So, I use my clothesline nearly every day for something. Usually there are diapers out there, which I love to do. And I can typically get by doing 1-2 loads of whites per week and maybe 1 dark, if I feel like separating anything. Usually it all just goes together. Probably makes people shudder but it’s not too bad. Dries really fast on drying racks in the winter and adds moisture to our house. And we have 3 kids so there’s always plenty of clothes to wash and 2 in diapers so always plenty of that too. 🙂
Every family member has a basket with their name on it and when it is family laundry night it all gets brought up and put away. The kids really need to be in on it when they are old enough.
Laundry isn’t much fun here either here as we have a two-story house and the washer and dryer are in the basement; that’s just not where it should be — two flights of steps for every load carried up and down. There’s still laundry for four here, my husband, myself, my oldest son and our lovely mutt, Lady. My oldest son does his own sometimes. Lady only needs one load a week for her blanket that tops her sleeping pad. My youngest son joined the Air Force, so he’s doing his own now, maybe… it’s a job that is new to him (muffled laughter here…) and I am willing to bet he no longer puts his clean clothes back in the laundry so he doesn’t have to put them away.
I wanted to note a few things about strategy that has made my life easier. I work a full-time office job, so it’s important not to waste a lot of time at home with housework. First of all, I buy the thin white towels and wash rags and keep a set of the better ones to put out when company comes. That saves on a lot of wash and dry time. They get the hot water and bleach and dry faster than the thick ones.
The easiest way to cope with the laundry is just to daily carry everything to the basement, sort it into laundry baskets placed on free-standing shelving and as the loads fill up, they get washed. It’s not a problem for us to do it that way as my freezer and shelving for canned goods is there too, so someone is always heading that way for something.
Keeping all the laundry in one spot already sorted seems to lower the actual number of loads that are done. That is important as our water and sewage bills come every three months, they are expensive bills here.
Fold the clothes right on top of the dryer as they are done and put into a basket(s) to carry back up. Keep one or two clothing racks with hangars to hang items immediately out of the dryer to avoid wrinkles and ironing. I iron very little now.
My last thought is that if you can afford it, consider having two washers and two dryers to help you zip through the massive piles. The time and sanity saved would be worth the cost.
Two things really have helped me
1) On Monday (the day that just happens to work best for me) all the laundry gets collected including the towels, bathroom rugs, and bed sheets. All the sheets are replaced with a second set and before towels are replaced I clean the bathrooms (to the extent that I can for the day)
2) I bought an extra laundry basket so that there is always a laundry basket in rotation sitting at the dryer. I fold as items come out of the & can actually fit 2 (sometimes 3) folded loads into one basket before I take it upstairs to be put away
Good luck! Spend some time trying different routines- you’ll get yours down!
Like D, I am big on checking whether they are tossing clean clothing into the bin. I did daily laundry for a long time but now I prefer to do 3 loads twice a week. Folding and sorting is the worst, for me, but one thing that makes it easier is washing loads based on what room they go to. I know that’s a big laundry no-no, mixing darks and lights, but I think our goodwill clothing investments can stand it.
For MJ with the bedwetter:
What saves me many days is a waterproof pad with a soft cotton side that I put under the child. She doesn’t like it, and when we take her to the bathroom at 10 or 11 pm (before we go to bed) we slip it under her, just in case.
I have two sets of sheets for each twin bed (and I have four of those), so there have been times I’ve put Spiderman sheets on her bed because that’s all that’s been left. If she gets the comforter wet, I have a smaller chenille blanket that she uses until the comforter cycles through the laundry. Her bed doesn’t always look magazine-picture perfect, but it’s what we suffer through until she outgrows it.
It’s just another reason why I have to do laundry every day.
This is for MJ, who has lots of laundry cuz of a bedwetter. A pediatrician told me a long time ago, when my son who is now 12 struggled with enuresis, that wearing a "good night" to bed would not change whether he had an accident or not, just how much laundry I would be doing if he did. We always told him that it was not his fault, it was just that his body couldn’t wake his brain since he slept so deeply. Hope this helps!
I am an "old" grandmother now, but this has always worked for me, when I was young and hung clothes on the line and now when I use the dryer. I fold and sort as I take them out of the dryer and I did from the line in the old days. I put them in the basket in the reverse order I will be unloading them, just makes it go faster. Example, the things on top will be unloaded in the first spot I come. I never really minded doing the laundry, always loved all the clean white diapers blowing in the breeze.
Why are you the only laundry person. 6 and 4 can fold and sort very well. Color matching a pile of sox can be great fun for a 2yr old. Even if the new crew doesn,t reach your personal standard goal, just being part of the solution will help with the quantity problem. Now your "big boy", read husband thats a different animal !
Wow! This is my first comment here, but on a favorite subject of mine! I probably won’t say anything new, but I just have to share!
We’re a family of eight – Dad, Mom, 9yo dd,8yo dd, 6yo dd, 4yo dd and 1yo ds & dd (yup, twins). I ‘occasionally’ cloth diaper the twins as well.
Having said that, I found the first place to start was to reduce the amount of clothes my kids have. They each have about 7 to 8 days worth of clothes, summer weight and winter weight.
Each of the older four has her own laundry basket hamper. Yep, all clothes go in there, all at once. (I’ve learned the hard way to keep red shirts OUT of their wardrobes until the shirt has been laundered a few times!) 9yo and 8yo are responsible TOTALLY for their laundry. I assigned each a day to do their laundry and they do their own hamper from carrying it down from the bedroom closet to putting it in the washing machine and dryer and folding (more or less) and putting it away. I wash and dry 6yo and 4yo and fold it. Each girl has to put it away (typically with supervision from me). 1yo’s have the life, in that they get to get messy and don’t have to clean up after themselves!
I sort DH and my laundry by whites and ‘everything else’. I wash our whites once a week and ‘everything else’ twice a week. I wash towels once a week and cloth diapers as the pail fills.
So, in a typical (haha) day, two loads of laundry are done. I made a schedule (which I now have memorized, but came in handy for my DH when he chose to take over laundry duty during my last pregnancy – actually, after Day 2 of carrying hampers down the basement stairs, he came home from work and announced that he was re-plumbing the washer up on the main floor, and he did, THAT night!) so I don’t stress about laundry piling up. I avoid washing on Sunday (and Saturday too, if I can).
I hope this helps someone out! 🙂
Margaret, I love your idea about each person assigned a particular day to do laundry. This is what I want to do at my house. I am hearing a lot of objections about it though. "It’s going to waste water and electricity!" "I will run out of clothes!" "I’ll ruin my work clothes!" My youngest is 14, the oldest child here is 21. I think when I tell them about your 8 and 9 year olds doing their own laundry, they might be a bit surprised. Again, I love this idea!!!!
As an "old" mom (17 year old Senior this year-last one in the nest) here’s how I ‘handle’ the laundry: your 17 year old son does his own! That probably saves me 2/3 of the work right there AND don’t get all bent out of shape if he doesn’t fold & put it away–he’s the one who has to wear it wrinkled up!!
On weekends or days off in the warm months (picture N Wisconsin) I hang out as many things as I can–which can mean 5-6 loads. But the rewards are phenomenal! God made the wind and sun and they do wonders on clothes & bedding–you cannot believe how fresh the house smells after bringing in those God-dried clothes. And don’t you believe those ‘laundry’ smelling air fresheners; they lie! You betcha!
Think of Mary washing Jesus’ clothes and treat your loved ones as she would…that’s the best advice, from my mother many years ago! May she rest in peace!!
Thank you all so much for the helpful info. This is my bug-a-boo subject, and I so needed to hear all of this.
Oh, I don’t know if anyone mentioned this, but dh’s idea is to have the kids make sure and wear their clothes for more than one day. This works for the older kids but the younger ones get sooo messy in just one day.
Hi!
I think one of the ideas that has saved my sanity in the laundry department is realizing it never goes away. I try to enjoy the instant gratification of a nice folded basket of clothing. I prefer to do a whole bunch every few days so I can ignore it for a few more days. My eldest daughters are now teenagers and they have a hand in the pile too! I’m not sure if I like the help or not. Sitting on the floor with a warm pile of clothes fresh from the dyer with a baby plopped in the middle of them helping me fold is a fond memory…
As it has taken me all day and night to read all 74 comments of this most-room-for-improvement-area of my domestic vocational life, I will now go to bed with a renewed plan of tackling those two baskets of clean clothes that my loving husband has washed and carried up stairs for me to fold and put away (with the 5 kidlets, ages 9,7,5,3,1yo, help).
I should mention that my husband is much better at multi-tasking than I am. We have a deal. It would appear that I am too all-or-nothing for the laundry mountain. I share the false reality of ‘its too big to tackle at one time so I am paralyzed and wont even touch it’…’what multi-colored 800 lb gorilla in the middle of the laundry room?’… ‘I don’t see it’…’You have clothes on’.. ‘I don’t see it’… ‘run away’ ‘run’.
Hubby washes out of desperation, helping me out and because he likes seeing clean clothes. I have proven too dysfunctional in this dept.
The Jim Hubby, kids and myself wear our clothes until they are dirty. I have 14 T-shirts and shorts for summer and 14 long sleeve shirts and pants for winter per child. This I can see it too much from the comments that mentioned numbers of outfits.
I fold everything into people piles, each person gets two to four piles, shirts, shorts, socks and underwear. Socks are one specific sock type per child. No matching just a pile of one kind of sock.
I have taken to running races with the kidlets with the clothes piles. You take Daddy’s socks and you take Mommy’s socks. Ready set go. First one back wins. Until all of the piles are gone and put away.
After reading all of this I feel blostered for the task at hand. I am going to try to fold one basket as it hits the main floor. Sadly, I am still not ready to head down into the dungeon and tackle the ‘gorilla’. But I am going to try to handle my half of the job better. Certainly I see it in a much better light after reading all of the comments.
Thanks for all of the input and great ideas.
I think Bed Wetters should be in ‘Good Nights’. They go up to 125 lbs wetters and take away much of the embarrassment that they can’t help. If they blow-out, which is rare with those, then you do their bedding. It works well with my 7yo. If they are going to grow out of it why let them wet the bed every night until they do?
God Bless all of our efforts and make us more like His mother – Truly Virtuous.
Without reading the other posts below, here are my tactics:
Preface: I have 2 kids (3 years and 18 months).
I have 4 laundry baskets in the bottom of my master closet. Each is a different color and represents Lights, Whites, Darks, & Very Delicates. Each child also has a designated basket of their own (usually in their closet). If I’m picking up dirty laundry around the house, I put as much as I can in the Master closet baskets so they are already pre-sorted, but if they don’t make it there, they can go in the kids baskets.
On Mondays I don’t make big plans. I do laundry! It averages 5-6 loads, but it gets done, and nothing is missed during the week. (Truth: I MIGHT do a load during the week of towels and dish rags if I run out).
I fold each load right away and lay out clothes to be hung later. My daughter’s clothes go in her basket, my sons clothes go in his basket, and at the end of the day those baskets go to their room for putting away.
Folding and drawers don’t bother me…it’s the HANGING UP!! So I might not get to it until Tuesday. Then I have the kids make a game out of it by handing me various kinds of hangers and guessing which one I want next.
This works for me. Good Luck!
I have four children and a husband who works out just about every day of the week, plus a football player son, three dancers and two soccer players and a black belt in karate to contend with. It’s not the daily stuff that brings me down (sometimes), it’s the extracurricular stuff!
I do three loads a day except for Sunday.
On Wednesday the beds are stripped and towels are washed. This is done with the help of my housekeeper.
For awhile there when things were very bad and my children were younger, I asked my housekeeper to come and do laundry one day a week. That really helped. I have a bit more time now because the children are older so I do it all myself. I really don’t mind it at all. It’s part of my daily routine.
Great posts from one and all… we’ve got three teens–14, 17, 19… and a finicky well pump and septic system that limits how many loads we do. It makes for some creative laundry combinations based on need. But what has worked for me is simply this: Teach your children to put "their" load away as soon as they are able to handle the task.
However in our house, at age 13, we had the solemn ceremony of the golden wash basket. Where, indeed, I passed the torch to the child who was of age. That child was taught all the laundry rules and the art of ironing. I guided that child over the course (more or less) of about 30 days. And because of our well/septic situation, they had to do their laundry based on "clearance" from mission control (me).
They all do their own laundry and have learned from their own foibles that they need to plan accordingly. God bless you all in your mothering!
Thank you all so much for the great ideas for taming the laundry beast! I am the mom who sent that e-mail to Danielle. I love all the ideas and plan to sit down tomorrow and come up with a new plan for laundry (and all the other cleaning chores) so that it will fit in with our homeschooling schedule. And I’ve got Danielle’s mantra in my head right now: "If I don’t stay on top of the laundry, it gets out of control and I get overwhelmed." I’m praying special rosaries for myself to practice consistency with regard to all this. Thanks again!
3 kids and 2 loads daily here ( we have some wetting the bed issues so sheets are always being washed).
Tips…
Do some every day. If you skip a day, you will regret it.
I seperate into hot wash (like socks, underwear, towels, sheets, or white fabric) and cold wash (anything colored). Cold keeps things from wearing out faster than needed and saves energy.
Do only a full BIG load. Saves time in trip to the washer, and saves energy in not having the washer and dryer on more times for small loads. So, this means I typically do about 1/2 as many hot washes as cold since I’m waiting for the socks and towels etc. to accumulate.
Use Tide. Yes, I know it’s probably the most expensive and not very eco friendly, but, I can throw ANYTHING in the wash without standing down in the basement pre-treating and know for sure it will come out clean. I also find that I can use about 2/3 the amount they recommend.
A lingerie bag for socks. Everything goes down the laundry chute BUT socks. For them we have mesh bags on hooks that get zipped up and thrown in the hot wask when full. We never have socks without mates anymore!
Being a working mom of four children (15,10,7, and 4), and a husband who works odd hours, and we also take care of my ailing father, I have found out that getting up early to put a load in,dry and fold it before work, helps. When I come home, I do another load. We do wash our towels everyday, which may be horrible to some!, but I grew up always using a half wet towel by someone else, and it grossed me out. I actually enjoy doing laundry, as it is therapeutic for me. I can sneak a few moments in the garage, and in the laundry area folding the clothes. It is like a mini vacation for me! So, early morning is the key for me for laundry, devotions, etc.