If you have a large family (generally defined as at least six or seven members of the family living together), you know how chaotic and busy the laundry room can be. Washing and drying clothes for a lot of people can keep you busy, especially if you have young children who seem to need several changes of clothing a day. Here are some tips to make your laundry a little less hard to handle. And those of use with smaller families (we are a family of five) can also use these tips.
Easy sorting
One of the toughest things about laundry in large families is figuring out what piece of clothing belongs to who. One way to get around this is by using a dot or x method. Each child in the family gets a certain number of Xs or dots. One dot is assigned to the eldest, two dots to the next child, and so on. Mark the dots on the label of an item of clothing. If a piece of clothing gets passed down to the next child, simply add a dot.
The Duggars that famous family of 17 kids say that they keep track of socks by making it simple. All of the girls wear white socks and all of the boys wear black socks. It makes matching them all up a lot easier. The kids just grab a pair from a bin.You could try the dot method with the socks as well, if assigning colors is too limiting.
For towels, you can assign a color to each member of the family. So if someone leaves a purple towel on the bathroom floor, you’ll know the culprit. And if said culprit runs out of towels, well, they will learn to pick up next time.
Establish a routine
Having a routine for the laundry is a good idea. It will help the laundry get done without it piling up into something that is overwhelming. Establish a routine that works for your family.
Your routine might be to collect the laundry and bring it downstairs in the morning before you do anything else. Or it might be to iron on Tuesdays. Decide when it is easiest to do the wash, whether it is loading the washer before breakfast, or in the evening after the kids are in bed, or perhaps some time in between. Fit the laundry into your day at the same time and in the same way, and it will become a habit.
Look for more ideas and solutions later today!
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, technology in the Computing Blog, and creating a home in the Home Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here.
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