I recently started doing laundry differently and I love it.
We used to gather all the clothes and sort them by color and then wash them and then sort them again by whose they were and then put them away. I'm not sure why I did it this way but I did. So after watching a particular episode of Jon and Kate plus 8 and seeing how she did laundry I decided I could adapt her method to my family.
Everyone has their own laundry basket (one for each kid, Mark and I share, and 1 for towels). The kids also have a laundry bag in the laundry room. The rule is if you take your clothes off downstairs then put them in your basket. If you take them off upstairs then they go in their own laundry bag. I also have a basket in the laundry room for just towels. On laundry day the kids bring their baskets to the laundry room and dump their bag of laundry in their basket. Then I wash each basket by itself on cold. Each basket is a large load-or close to it. After the load is dried it goes back into the basket and in the case of the kids they take them back downstairs and fold and put their own clothes away.
I still do laundry once a week but this method has saved me time in the sense that I'm not doing the sorting before or after washing. Maybe this wasn't an epiphany to anyone but me, but I'm sure glad I figured it out.
4 comments:
When each child's clothes are washed in cold, how do you get the grungy socks and the oops-they-didn't-wipe-very-well underwear clean? :)
Good question. Basically, some of those stains don't come out until spring. The sun is an incredible stain remover so when it's nice enough I will hang some of those stained items outside to dry,if I remember. I would say the clothes are clean--they don't smell like poop-in the case of the undies. Underwear and socks I just don't worry that much about. It's the new shirt or jeans that I might try and use some stain remover--but honestly I just don't do that very often.
I just wanted to say that I really enjoy reading your blog because we are at the same stage of life--the one where developing a good system for laundry as actually exciting--never thought I'd think that! Thanks too for all the parenting posts, family planning, etc. I love the food for thought.
I love this idea! I have been doing a modified version of this since having Audrey, since I just keep a laundry basket in her room, and so far it seems to be working well...although I must admit, when she has a blowout, the poopy laundry gets washed all by itself. I just can't seem to bring myself to wash anything else in that water?!? Thanks for the post, Leatha!
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