Minimizing the laundry monster

[This Busy Mom]

We are pretty busy... but who isn't??

The laundry gets insane, and I handwash dishes which takes me an hour to get done everyday.

So... I read somewhere in big families that they wash each load according to who it belongs to. So, what I'm thinking is doing that, putting that person's clothes in a basket and letting that person fold/put away their own clothes. My older two are 9 and 7, so I don't think this is unreasonable. My dh helps my son and I help my dd make sure her clothes are put away.

Whites can be washed separately.

I just started this... and I think I like it

[jghomeschooler]

I don't like doing small loads, I feel like I might as well wash as much as possible when I have the time to do a load, kwim? BUT, I have a small basket for each person, and I don't fold 10yo's clothes any more, she has to fold/hang them and put them away. If she doesn't, then she'll wear wrinkled clothes, her choice. I still have to put away 3yo and 1yo's clothes, and baby in womb's clothes, plus mine. That's PLENTY for one person in this house. If you keep doing loads for each person, IMO the 7yo and 9yo are plenty old enough to learn to wash their own clothes, that would help you even more. My daughter does her own laundry when it's been piling up in her room, I will NOT go to her room to gather dirty laundry, we have a laundry sorter in the laundry room and when she puts her clothes in there I wash them with ours. She's been doing her own laundry and helping me with all the laundry for 2-3 years now. hth

[This Busy Mom]

I'm not going to do small loads, either. I think I'm going to give them clothes baskets for their room and when they are full, they can load them into the washer. Truthfully, I'm not even too concerned about the whites because they don't care. They aren't ever "white" anyways because they wear them outside (I'm forever telling them to come in and put their shoes on).

[Wonder Woman]

I started that a few months back...I have a bin for ds, one for dh, one for dh's uniforms, one for me, one for towels, and one for whites.
When they are full, it's time to do laundry :)

[lumpofclay]

I have four bins and divide clothes into loads as they are put into the dirty clothes. For the past four years or so, I've done a load a day, with one day for sheets. It's worked out well. Now, however, with homeschooling, and running to gymnastics, dance, etc., I feel loaded down with doing laundry every day! So we're trying something new. Tuesday is now laundry day. We wash all day long, and at night, we *all* (except Truman, of course! LOL) help fold and put it away. I feel like I'm getting 4 loads put away in the time it used to take to put away one. I just have to remember to keep re-booting the laundry all day Tuesday. The girls are old enough to fold towels & washcloths, their panties and shorts. We hang almost all their tops. It's working out really well, but then again, we've only been doing it a couple of weeks. ;)

[Jemma2]

Our family is small and young, but this works for me. Each day when we come downstairs for the day I bring a basket with everyone's laundry to the laundry room. It gets divided into groups thanks to the laundry sorter. If there is enough for a load (usually is) than I wash. I fold it as it comes out of the dryer and put it in the basket to take up at the end of the day. The basket is also handy to put anything else that I know I have to bring back upstairs. Putting everything away sometimes takes a while. It sometimes sits in piles in my bedroom a few days. But ds who's 5 can put his clothes away sometimes. I feel like I always have a handle on the laundry this way.

[Mothering by Heart]

I have done that before. It worked great. Not sure why I am not doing it now :think
I had a plastic laundry basket in each of th kids rooms. When it was full I would wash, dry, fold and put them right back in their rooms for them to put away.

I didn't worry about whites either. Most of their undies are colored anyway, and we hardly wear shoes, let alone socks.

[Iarwain]

We have done it different ways at different times. In my house kids learn to wash laundry when they are 6 or so.

Right now the three oldest (twins are almost 10 and Princess is 7) wash, fold and put away their own. I have nothing to do with their laundry. I wash mine, dh's and the two littlest as well as household stuff and diapers. I have two baskets in my laundry room for lights and darks and one basket in each bedroom. I bring my bedroom basket down each morning and sort and wash two loads and leave whatever is left over in the baskets in the laundry room. We were told that our septic tank can only handle 3 loads a day so I HAVE to wash 2 loads every day 'cause if we get behind we'll never catch up. The third load each day is for the kids' laundry. We don't worry about sorting theirs unless there's something new that might bleed. Folding is part of a weekly chore rotation and whoever has that chore that week folds all the laundry and delivers the baskets back to the bedroom they belong in. Right now this is working very well and as long as I toss in a load when I get up and remember to switch it and put in another we never get behind and the monster stays under control.

In the past I have had the older kids each do one load of laundry and one load of dishes each day for their chores and then I just folded it all into big stacks on the table without sorting it. They would then sort it and put it away.

For me I just have to make sure I do some every day. When you have more than a couple kids you can basically figure it's never going to be ALL done, but as long as there's less than three loads dirty and everything is contained in baskets I figure we're doing fine. Keeping it contained makes such a big difference to me psychologically, that's why I emphasize that bit. I'm lousy at housework, but laundry is the one area I feel like I keep under control pretty well.

[poetmom]

The advantages to having teen/preteen children in the house....they do their own laundry, so I do one load of whites and one load of darks, then one load of sheets and towels...and I'm done for the week! :)

[boonpnutsmom]

We do laundry ONLY on the weekends unless something major comes up, sick child perhaps. The clean clothes go on the table in the patio and it is not always folded and put right away. Last night while everyone slept that is my unwind time, I folded clothes, once it is folded everything is put in the right persons piles and the DH helps me put it away. I have only three baskets left and three more loads in the wash, we were five weeks behind. But we also have a rule, not all of clothes can be clean at once, or there is no, room, so I guess it is time to go through closets again.

[This Busy Mom]

so I guess it is time to go through closets again.

We have that problem here along with poorly utilized closet space. We're going to do some remodeling in a couple weeks to my dd's closet to fix part of the problem.

[ArmsOfLove]

What we do is wash a load and then when I fold it I stack them in each person's clothes and everyone puts their own stuff away. Even my 3yo, with a little help from my 7yo, puts his own clothes away. The problem isn't the kids--it's dh and I :blush Stuff makes it into our room folded and sorted but doesn't always get put away.