Thursday, June 11, 2009

Fighting The Battle Of Laundry


So I will be the first one to admit, after my 4th child was born I felt like I could never catch up with the laundry. It honestly was stressing me out, on a good day I would have only 4 loads of laundry left after doing a few. Everywhere I looked there was a piece if clothing somewhere, rather it be under a bed, behind the door, or stuffed somewhere in the corner there was LAUNDRY!! Oh, I don't want to forget to mention the dressers and closets, oh my, they were so unorganized and crammed you could not fit a thing in them!!

So a few weeks ago I told my wonderful husband that I was going to go through all of the clothes, throw away, give away, and store away this out of control madness!!

Guess what I DID IT!!! I am so happy and my days go by so much smoother!! Yeah!!!

Here is how I did it!!

First of all I went through and simplified all of the clothing and what ever was not needed, was thrown out.
All bedrooms have 1 dresser in it all 3 boys share, and the 2 girls share, and hubby and I share.
Then of course we have our closets!!

Each bedroom has there own little basket. After the children, are done with there changing they put in there own basket, girls with girls, boys with boys, and the hubby and I in another!!

The whites go in the basket in my room ( normally I pick out the whites as I do the laundry and put them in the proper spot )

The towels go in the hamper in the laundry room!!

Whatever basket has the most clothing is the baskets I do that day. I normally do 2 loads a day sometimes 3!! I do towels 2 times a week and whites 1 time!!

Every night after the kids have had there baths they know that they are to lay out the clothing that they want to wear the next day. The older siblings help the younger ones!!

As for putting away the clothing I use to struggle in this area also. Now I will not allow myself to put another load in the wash until the load that is on the line or in the dryer is folded and put away.

The children put away there own clothing, and help the younger ones. When they are not looking, mommy goes in and does it nice and tidy, or if it is really sloppy I call the children in to do it the right way with a little of mommy's help.

I am so excited to say that I have made it through the laundry battle for several weeks now. My daily duties are so much easier!!!

I would love to challenge some of you to try to become stress free from laundry!!
To the ones that don't really have a laundry issue, I would love to know how you all keep up with your laundry!!

6 comments:

Keeper of the Home said...

Laundry isn't too hard at our home. I do mine, Hubby does his (by his choice...he doesn't want to take a chance of his work clothes having anything on them that might ruin any one else's clothes or towels or such.

~Mrs. M

The K. Family said...

Better watch out! It seems like every time I weed out clothes and cut it down to managable size, some well meaning people drop boxes and bags on me of clothes to look through! Sure glad someone's gotten a handle on it:) Sometimes I wish we lived in the days where kids could wear the same dirty clothes all week and no one would bat an eye! I am thankful we do have an abundance of clothes though!!

Deanna said...

Well, we have 8 children and I just know one day, ONE DAY, there will be no more mountains of laundry waiting for me each morning.
Eventually.
Just as soon as they've all married and moved away.
Of course, youngest is 3...I suppose that means I need to get a grip now, heh?

We have mountains everywhere! Does anyone have concrete proof that clothes don't multiple in the dark of night??! I swear, we could do 10 loads and we'd still gather 2 more baskets from here and there!

I'm inspired! Now that you've done it -- and lived to tell the story -- I want that same thing. LOL this weekend we'll just bite the bullet and do it!

Deanna

Sandra said...

We have two clothes hampers:One in our bathroom and one at the end of the hall for the kids. Every day the first thing I do after my husband leaves for work, is start a load of laundry. Some days I have 2 loads, but some times just one. I do darks one day whites the next. My girls bring them in from the line and fold them up and take them to each persons room. They they must put them up before bed. I also bought color coded bath towels and we hung racks on the bathroom walls. Each person uses their color towel and hangs it up. Every Friday they put their towels in the hamper. This saves on a lot of white laundry. They are clean when they get out of the shower so why wash it? It hangs up to dry and they use it again the next day. An older lady told me this is how she did her laundry back when I had my third child and I have always done it this way. I also iron every Monday, even if it is just 2 shirts, I get the iron out and just do it.

Jamie Stroupe said...

Deanna ~ please let me know the outcome of your weekend! I am praying that you have wonderful results like I! You have 3 more children than I, you have a more difficult task!

Mrs Krahn ~ Oh how do I feel the same way, you would think with all of the new gadgets and all, life would get more simple, but the more they come out with the harder we make it!

Mrs. M ~ I will be there some day, where I will only have 2 people to do laundry for, and only 1 time a week! I am not rushing anything though, just trying to enjoy it!

Sandra ~ I like the idea with the towels. At one time I had names on the tags and each person had there own towel but for some reason or another it did not last!

Thank You all for stopping by!

Mrs. B, a very peculiar person said...

Mrs. Stroup,
Like you, I found that reducing the amount of clothing we had in our home REALLY reduced the amount of laundry I found myself doing every day/week.

I love Sandra's idea for differnet colored towel for each person in the home. I will certainly try this for our home - I have a youngin' who likes to use other people's towels and then leave them on floors or stuffed in a closet - if he had his own towel color, maybe this sort of thing would be reduced.

Mrs.B