I felt defeated by laundry when it was just me and my husband, now we have 3 three kids. I’ve tried every laundry hack known to man, but I believe I’ve cracked the code, and I wanted to share what has finally helped me get a grip on laundry.
Past Attempts that Failed
First, let’s talk about what hasn’t worked for me. I tried to save all the laundry for the weekend. That works unless you have plans, or um what to rest. This usually ended with me doing a lot of laundry on Sunday night, usually leaving some of it piled up in a chair in my bedroom.
I have other post on my blog (Busy as a Mother: Life Hacks to Keep Your Sanity) where I had talked about doing all the laundry in one day. When I wrote that post, we had one kid. I seriously don’t think it is humanly possible to do all the laundry in one day, when there are five people living in the home.
I also tried nixing hampers and using the washing machine as the hamper. To make this work, instead of putting your dirty clothes away in the hamper, you put them directly into the washing machine. The washing machine is then run daily. Therefore, everyday, a days worth of laundry is being washed. The problem with this idea is I was the only one on board. I could not get my husband to make the trip across the house to put his dirty clothes in the washing machine. We also would have had to simply do it for our kids, they wouldn’t be able to do that. Another burden this way brings about, is sorting. Have mercy at the sorting that you have to do, once you pull everything out of the dryer. If you have same gender kids, close in age, sorting can be a extreme form of torture.
So, these are all the ways I couldn’t make laundry work for me in my home. But now I have a system, its quick, there is no sorting, and I’ve been able to maintain it.
My Laundry Hack
1. You need lots and lots of hampers.
In order to make this hack work, you are going to need a good amount of hampers. We use these types of hampers. Everyone gets their own hamper. Don’t share one with your husband, everyone gets their own hamper. Then, I used a black sharpie to label the hampers. My hamper has a “D” on it, for Dana, etc. You also need a hamper that stays near or inside of your laundry room (or closet). I have about 3 in my laundry room (I’ll explain why, in a bit)
2. Make a schedule.
Alright, I recommend writing this down. You need to determine some type of schedule. For example, every Monday I wash my husbands hamper. Every Tuesday, my daughters hamper, Wednesday, my hamper, Thursday, my oldest son’s hamper, Friday, my youngest son’s hamper. I never stray from this schedule. I do not recommend straying from the schedule because it will throw off the entire system.
3. Wash and dry one, Fold one.
This laundry hack involves washing and drying one hampers worth each day, while putting away the previous day’s clothes. For example, on Monday, when I wash my husband’s hamper, once they are done washing, I put them in the dryer. This is it. On Tuesday I wash my daughter’s hamper, and I run the dryer for about 4 minutes. I then pull out my husband’s clothes, fold, hang them etc, and put them away. I put my daughter’s clothes in the dryer, and that’s it. On Wednesday I wash and dry my clothes, and put away my daughters clothes.
This system keeps my from having to sort anything.
4. Towels, Blankets and Sheets
Remember those extra hampers I said to place in or near the laundry room. Let’s say on Thursday, while I’m putting my son’s clothes in the washing machine he has a few towels in his hamper. I place those towels in the hamper I have in the laundry room. I repeat, towels do not get washed with clothes. Everyone will have towels in their hamper. By Saturday, that hamper in my laundry room is now full of towels. So on Saturday I wash towels. Keep in mind, Saturday is also the day I put away my youngest son’s clothes. On Sunday, I will put away towels.
Now I said I have about 3 extra hampers in our laundry room, I use the other ones for blankets and sheets. Typically on Sunday I just strip a bed and wash, dry, and remake the bed all in the same day. But sometimes I will let a blanket stay in one of those hampers until Sunday when I have time to take care of it, or I can throw it in with some sheets I’m washing, etc.
Ta-Da!
And there you have it, your life just got like 1% easier. Every time I share this hack with people you can see they have this ah-ha moment and they implement it immediately in their own home.
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