I am not a perfectionist by any means, although I have been accused of having OCD a number of times. And, keeping up with the laundry in my house is definitely NOT my favorite thing! Our family creates between 15 and 20 loads of laundry each week! Dealing with dirty and clean clothes for a family of nine can be especially daunting, but I've found a few things that make my life a little bit easier to cope with. I think my methods can work for families of any size as well, so, big or small, I hope these tips help ease your load!
First, lets start with the laundry room. It's important to make sure your area is set up and organized in a way that makes sense and is functional. I must have a shelf or cupboard over my washer for all of the detergents and things I use. I always keep a trash can of some kind near the dryer for lint and trash I find in clothes pockets. Having a place in the laundry room to fold the clean laundry is an absolute must for me. I have found that folding loads as soon as they are dry is the best way to help me stay on top of the laundry. If I just dump the clothes on a bed or couch too often things accumulate to the point that I feel totally overwhelmed! Whether you do a load or two or three every day, or have a big laundry fest once a week, that is the key to getting your laundry done as far as I am concerned! Here's a shot of my current laundry room:
This is my two youngest kids' closet. My two-year-old's clothes are in the blue bins on the top shelf. He has a bin for pants, shirts, pj's and socks and sweaters. All of his church clothes are hanging. My baby is two months old and I am using two hanging shelves for his things. My favorite part about the hanging shelves is that they keep all of the clothes neat but still visible and easily accessible.
This is my two youngest girls' closet. They are six and 7 1/2 so they needed to be able to reach their own clothes and also be able to put them away themselves.
I found these very inexpensive plastic shelves and they work perfectly! I had these cute wicker baskets and they use those for undies, socks, tights and swimsuits. Those are things that kids can never keep neat anyway so I figured sticking them all in one basket would be just fine! They have a shelf for pj's, shirts and sweaters and pants. Anything nice, like dresses, get hung up. It's super easy for them to put away their clean clothes themselves, although I do go in about once or twice a month to organize and neaten things up.
The cardboard boxes you see are for storing our hats and gloves for the summer. During the winter we use the bucket you see below plus another to keep track of them! The shoe rack holds our church shoes or shoes that we don't use often.
First, lets start with the laundry room. It's important to make sure your area is set up and organized in a way that makes sense and is functional. I must have a shelf or cupboard over my washer for all of the detergents and things I use. I always keep a trash can of some kind near the dryer for lint and trash I find in clothes pockets. Having a place in the laundry room to fold the clean laundry is an absolute must for me. I have found that folding loads as soon as they are dry is the best way to help me stay on top of the laundry. If I just dump the clothes on a bed or couch too often things accumulate to the point that I feel totally overwhelmed! Whether you do a load or two or three every day, or have a big laundry fest once a week, that is the key to getting your laundry done as far as I am concerned! Here's a shot of my current laundry room:
Now, let's look at what to do with the stuff once it's clean! My family does not have dressers of any kind. I think they make putting laundry away more difficult than it needs to be, they take up valuable space in bedrooms and add a lot of weight to our household when we move! I am currently employing a couple different techniques for storing our clean clothes, and they both are entirely contained inside the kids' closets!
While I'm at it I guess I can go ahead and show you what our front closet looks like. That is where we keep all of our coats and shoes, and during the winter our hats, gloves and snow pants as well! Our family does not wear shoes in the house so it made sense to just keep them all in the closet. It has turned out to be a great way to keep track of their shoes as well! I can honestly say that when we need to leave the house we don't have to waste a bunch of time finding shoes!
Our everyday shoes are on this rack outside the closet with all of our crocs and flip-flops in the bucket.
Okay, I think that just about covers it all! At least, the important things I wanted to share with you anyway! I really hope these ideas help out, goodness knows we moms need some help sometimes!
