laundry ~

Laundry ~ that never ending, cyclical duty of motherhood ~ I used to have "a" laundry day, but I often felt overwhelmed by the mountain of darks, whites, and delicates that piled up in front of me and threw it all in on cold. I also never ended up putting much of it away as it was too much to put up in each room and into it’s drawer or cubby! So, it sat there most of the week and we dressed out of the pile of clean clothes sitting on a dirty floor…yuck…

I have also just tried to wash randomly during the week…but it was difficult to always know what I needed clean and found it still to be frustrating and unorganized…

Then, I decided…laundry day should become plural and established! I divide my laundry up into three days a week…Monday, Wednesday and Friday. These are the days the whole family knows I will be washing! On these days, each morning before heading down to the laundry room… I simply grab all the dirty clothes from the hampers (the one in the master bath and the one in the kids bath) and grab the towels off the rings. I take the clothes down to the laundry room where I have a hamper with three sections. (I found it at Wal-Mart for a good price in the container/storage section) I divide up the colors into darks, whites, and towels. I start the first load right then and there. And as each load comes out of the dryer I put them away. I even fold the load upstairs by the kid’s rooms and put the stuff away still cooling.

There is so much less to wash and put away…(only really two days of clothes), so it takes very little time to put everything back in it proper place. Some of my friends even do a load of laundry each morning…collecting the house’s dirty clothes and running one load on cold and putting it all away within the hour!

Some laundry tips –
1. Fold the clothes near the rooms where they will go to cut back on effort and time

2. Wash bigger loads, combining lights and darks on cold to cut back on time

3.Have established hampers for dirty clothes – gather only from the hampers… if your kids want it washed it must be in the hamper...they will catch on when their favorite shirt is dirty because they left it on they floor in the bathroom.

4. Pray for each child as you fold and put away their clothes.

5. Invest in a laundry hamper with sections to put lights/darks/delicates/towels etc in…they sell them everywhere…it keeps your laundry room so much neater and you can grab any dirty clothes gathered around the house and drop them in the established sections…for example, Fisher likes to take his shoes and socks off in the house, but he is not near his bathroom hamper…he can put his socks in the laundry room hamper in the “whites section” just as easy.