conquering mt. laundry

After five years of parenting and three children, I've finally decided that the length of your laundry to-do list is directly correlated to the ages of your children.  Babies generate lots of laundry.  Two babies generate even more laundry.  My experience has been that you get a brief respite around the toddler years, only to see the pace pick up again in the preschool years when the wee ones start tackling finger painting and potty training. 

One of my favorite laundry stories is about a time when we visited one of my dearest girlfriends who had laundry, I kid you not, piled KNEE HIGH across her entire laundry room floor.  I just happened to discover this when I popped upstairs to check on our kids and discovered them playing "beach", which entailed jumping into the "surf" of this poor woman's dirty laundry.  Gross, yeah.  I have teased her about it mercilessly ever since.  Of course, I can laugh since it wasn't me.  Because I've never been that behind on my laundry.  Nope, not me.

I started out staying fairly on top of the laundry when my oldest was born, despite the fact that I changed his clothes 15 times a day because heaven forbid he should experience dampness, drool, food stains, or spit up anywhere on his body for longer than 1.5 seconds.  When the second came along 17 months later, all the baby clothes that had weathered the first boy in pristine condition were destroyed.  Child #2 was not only messier by nature, but possessed a mom that was so overwhelmed by all things baby that she didn't even have time to swipe a stain stick across a garment, more less whisk it straight into the washer before it had sat on the laundry room floor for two weeks.  

I tried every which way to manage the laundry - the one (or even two) load every day technique, the setting-aside-one-day-a-week-to-do-all-laundry technique, the alternating hamper technique (adult laundry one day, toddler the next, baby the next) - all to no avail.  In all honesty, I FINALLY caught up on my laundry when A) I quit my job and B) my kids were 4 1/2 and 3.  Right about that time, I had a third baby and now I'm back to square one.

There are two things that send my best-laid laundry plans awry.  The first is that I have no problems washing or even folding - my problem is putting away.  I have three laundry baskets, all of which contain neatly folded and stacked laundry that sits in them for WEEKS before it gets put away.

My second problem is that while I might be able to keep up with everyone's clothing, there is no margin for error (as with all things Baby Bunching).  That is to say, I can keep clothes clean.  I cannot stop that process to accommodate sheets that someone has pee-peed on, pool towels that have been left in a heap on the porch floor, soiled pants/underwear from a potty training accident, linens from guests that have visited, sofa slipcovers that need washing, and ESPECIALLY not any fine washables (typically mine) that have to be washed or dried on gentle cycle.  Any one of these items creates a laundry backlog that takes me weeks to recover from.

So today I'm sharing a list of laundry tips that either I use or I've heard and keep meaning to try.  Please add your favorite laundry management tips:

Things I Do That Work:

• Do at least one load of laundry, start to finish, every day.  
• Fold clothes directly out of the dryer.  Hang them up while they're hot - saves ironing later.
• Have a sock bin for socks without mates so they don't languish in nooks and crannies all over your house.
• Have one laundry basket per "group" of people (one for the baby, one for mom and dad, one for big brothers who share a room) and sort the clothes immediately after you fold them.

Things I've Heard About and Have Been Meaning to Try

• Get a 3-divider laundry sorter and put all family clothes in this one sorter so you can stay on top of it and keep it from overflowing.
• If you must have a basket, have only one.  Can't do more laundry until you put the clothes away.
• Buy less clothes, which forces you to do laundry more frequently (Linda swears this one simplified her life).
• Send all the laundry away to have the laundromat do it for me.
• Stop having babies.

Comments

[Lois]

I am the same way, have the same laundry issues as you. I do good with the clothes, but when beach towels, sheets, etc., need washing, I get messed up. I also am terrible about leaving folded clothes in the laundry basket for weeks. That drives my husband crazy! :) The 3-divider hamper has helped organize me some, and gets rid of piles of laundry in the laundry room.

[Motherhood Uncensored]

Yep. I do laundry almost every day. I finally came to grips with it.

Boy that was hard.

What sucks is that my husband travels A LOT and so he'll do selfish loads before a trip (don't get me started) and then will come home with massive piles thus wrecking my regular plan (sheets on weekend, etc.).

I definitely fold right after doing the laundry and I have the kids put their own stuff away. Even the 2 year old. He can open a drawer. :)

[jenni]

I also do laundry every day. It has been a tough pill to swallow, but I can't deal with spending an entire day doing laundry.

My husband also does selfish loads and it pisses me off. I like clean underwear, too. Just because I'm SAHM doesn't mean I want to be filthy. I mean, I often AM, but still.

[Shannon]

I loved your post because it is so true. I work with mostly single people with no kids and they just look at me weird when I say I spent the weekend doing laundry.

[Carol Amie]

I've taken to doing 2 loads/day Mon-Fri and giving myself weekends "off"...if we have a diaper leak at bedtime or a child who morphs into a puke machine all bets are off but otherwise 10 loads/week keeps my family of 5 on top of it all. My newly 4 year old (oldest) DH also helps me by putting away his own folded laundry at the end of each day. Our laundry routine looks like this:
one load into the wash when I wake up, goes into the dryer while the kids eat breakfast and another load into the wash. When my older 2 go down for naps at noon I fold the first load and dry the second. THen fold the 2nd when the baby goes down for her nap to have all laundry clean and ready to be put away when the biggies wake up from naptime.
I fold directly into two baskets: one for DH, myself and the baby (because we share a room) and one for the older 2 and the linen closet (they've got little clothes so there's still plenty of room for towels and sheets). Those baskets sit in the hall outside of our bedrooms until the evening and then we put away the laundry when we set out PJ's and clothes for tomorrow at bedtime. Yes, it means I have a basket of folded laundry in my hallway most of the time, but it's one basket of *clean* clothes and it's right where it needs to be when we get the opportunity to get into a room to put it away. Once the baskets have been emptied we load them up with dirty stuff from the hampers and I take them back down to the laundry while I'm doing my nightly clean-up. Another big help for me was actually posting a schedule (taped inside the kids' snack cupboard door because I'm sure to see it a LOT during the day) of what linens should be washed when. That way everyone's bed gets done at least once a week and I never have an overwhelming stack of sheets because I removed more than one load worth at a time.

[Erin]

I wholeheartedly agree with the laundry sorter. It helps you see what loads need to done (so your husband doesn't have to dig into the ratty undershirts for fear of criticizing your laundry skills). I also think this helps me to be better at putting things away. I have one in our room for darks/whites/delicates and one in the girls room (ages 2 and 4.5 months) for toddler clothes/baby clothes/sheets, blankets, bibs, burp cloths, etc.

As for staying on top of things, I go in early and he works later (he does the morning routine). So, in the morning I put a load in the washer and then before he goed to work he moves it to the dryer. I can forget about until we sit down to watch a show and then I'll fold it.

[pollyandaleczmom]

I have to confess to being the girl who provided the "ocean" of laundry for the children to "swim" in.
However, I will also claim to be the inspiration for bullet points one and two under the heading of "Things [you] have Heard..."
Once I received a lecture on the state of my laundry room, and got it in proper order (2-3 weeks of continuous laundry), I adopted these techniques... I have never had anything more than a "small pond" on the floor of the laundry room since!