Written by Free Stylin’ Beth, Contributing Author
K, so raise your hand if laundry is your favorite chore. No? Yeah, me either. There are so many steps, it takes awhile to get through the entire process. And that’s just for one load. (I am SO glad I have a washer and dryer to do most of the work though. I have no idea how my great grandmothers washed everything by hand back in the day!!)
I think one of the most difficult parts about laundry, for me, is the follow through. Although sorting the clothes and transferring them from the washer to the dryer isn’t hard, I don’t like to fold. At. All. And then putting it away? Eww. The Hubs tries to be sweet and help, but our communication can be totally off sometimes, and I’ll walk in to the laundry room to find clothes in both the washer and dryer that I didn’t even know were there. And now both loads have to be rewashed.
I try to make laundry fun for my boys. They like to help sort and put things in the washer and dryer. But they’re just like their mama…putting away is their least favorite. I tried combining everyone’s clothes to wash and dry one load a day, but asking my cute kidlets to put their clothes away everyday seemed to be a never ending battle.
Super frustrating, right? Please tell me I’m not the only one alone in this!
It came down to either living with eternal piles of laundry in the chair, half finished loads in the washer and dryer, and laundry baskets everywhere (No Thanks!) OR organize my laundry schedule.
I’d tried the first. It was NOT working. So a schedule is exactly what I did.
A Simple Laundry Schedule
When creating our family laundry schedule, I had one rule. Keep it Simple. If the schedule had a lot of rules and steps, it wouldn’t run smoothly, and we’d all give up.
Here is our new plan, and I hope a few of these ideas are ones you could adopt for your family’s laundry schedule.
I have assigned ONE day to each family member. That family member knows which day belongs to them, so they know to have all of their dirty clothes ready to go.
Our Family Laundry Schedule
Monday: The Hubs and I wash our color clothes.
Tuesday: I wash my little J’s clothes and sheets.
Wednesday: The Hubs and I wash our whites and sheets.
Thursday: My older boy, “Pickle,” gets his clothes and sheets washed.
Friday: I wash all of the towels and rugs from the week.
Saturday: Blankets and comforters get washed if needed.
This system is working so well for our family because everyone understands their accountability. When Pickle gets home from school on Thursdays, he knows he’ll have a basket of clean clothes waiting for him to put away. The Hubs doesn’t start a load of laundry, without me knowing, because if he needs something, he usually just has a day to wait. While J is home with me, he is still learning to sort and “help” fold, but our loads are SO MUCH SMALLER!! that I don’t get overwhelmed when he makes a few mistakes.
Now we don’t have dirty laundry piling up in baskets.
Now we don’t have clean laundry piling up on the couch.
Now we have clean clothes. And they are actually put away!!
This is how I’ve simplified our laundry schedule. What works for you?
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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve pretty much always done laundry on Monday, Wedneday and Friday – about 3 loads each time – whites, darks, colds. For a while, our son and daughter-in-law and their baby were living with us. During that time, I still did laundry on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. My daughter had Thursday. My daughter-in-law had Tuesday and the weekend plus the evenings when I was done (my laundry is almost always done by 5:00). When my kids were home, I had Monday, Wednesday & Friday and one of them had Tuesday and the other had Thursday. If they missed their day, they were out of luck until the weekend. I definitely love having a laundry schedule.
Yes, this is a good strategy – sharing responsibility over your family members which not only makes your life easier but also teaching them responsibility over their laundry and other household chores. Thanks for sharing!
There’s 4 of us in the house and we pretty much rotate who washes, who folds and who irons. On Saturday morning, everyone drops their clothes into the apprpriate pile and then the washer is in charge of loading the w/d and delivering it to the next person to sort into clothes that need folding and those that need to be fold ironed and/or hung. The sorter is also the folderand only passes the clothes that need to be ironed and hung to whoever does that. That person who gets that pile is in charge of ironing and bringing the clothes to the right room. Onlly one person has the day off every Saturday. Sounds busy but this is being done synonymously with cleaning up around the house so it happens pretty quickly. Plus this way the kids learn how to do their own clothes (and think that they have maid service or give the impression that its a “woman’s job” and we only do it once a week instead of being stuck with the same chore every day. Seems to work for us! :-)
*sorry for the typos. Still getting used to this iPad!*
That is a fantastic way to get the family involved!!
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