7 Laundry Tips for Family of 6

Luke 11:25

And when it comes, it finds the house swept and put in order.

Look familiar?

      As a child, I was never the "neat" or "ocd clean" type. I honestly did not care if my bed was made or if my toys were put away in their proper place. It used to drive my brother crazy, as he was the exact opposite. My friend, who was a lot like me in this respect, and I would go in my brother's room and mess up his neatly made bed just for fun. Ironically, this friend and I owned our own cleaning business called A & A Cleaning Service when we were off from school in the summer months. Needless to say, we had no clients. 

    As I got older and had kids, I had to change because I like clean and neat (I just liked somebody else to do it for me). I've realized that my household can be clean and orderly but it had to be super organized. Organized is my version of lazy. If I have a system to things, then I do less work! Win for me! Oh, and I married a man who enjoys cleaning (well, doesn't mind it).

     Here is my system for laundry. I never have random piles and laundry is always done and put away. It may not be ironed and my folding technique is not department store-worthy, but at least I put it away, I guess, and the laundry is done!

7 Laundry Tips for a Family of 6

1- Sort dirty laundry in bins and only washing that bin that way things get put away faster and schedule when each bin is to get washed/dryed/put away. This is seriously the biggest thing for me - separating items in laundry bins after we are done wearing an item. My master bathroom has three laundry bins.  labeled "mom," "dad," & "socks and underwear/nightwear." With everything already separated, it makes it MUCH more simpler to put things away. Noah (my oldest son) has his own laundry bin in his room and the babies' laundry is all together. I do Noah and the babies' stuff during the week (Noah 1 load and babies about 2-3 per week, and I do one a day during the week days, so M-Th) and I do my and my husband's stuff on the weekend. I also make sure to put the clean clothes away in the same day. 

2- Label drawers and have a specific place for everything. We own 4 dressers; one for myself, my husband, the boys and the girls. I like  for myself the ikea hemnes dressers because it has 4 large drawers and 4 small drawers. The small drawers are labeled: socks, undies, bras, and leggings/pantyhose. The larger drawers I have drawer dividers so I can divide pajama bottoms from tops and long sleeve tops and short sleeve tops. I love this dresser so much that I bought one for the girls. All the dressers in the house are labeled for where everything needs to go.

3- Do not hang kid garments and limit the amount of hanging for adult garments and check out my method of hanging! Before the triplets, I hung all pants, all dresses, and skirts and most tops. Now, I fold pants and put in a drawer labeled "pants." I am also not meticulous about how I fold and I stack the babies' garments. I finally came up with a system for tops that wrinkle that need to be hung. I hang stuff now like you hang drapes. I grab the item by the tag.

4- Stop wasting your time sorting socks and looking for the match that the dryer ate. Buy all white socks. About 30 white baby socks, 15 white Noah socks, 10 white Alexis crew socks, 10 white Tim crew socks, and 10 white ankle Tim socks (I don't like ankle socks). It makes folding easy peesy because items were already separated before washing.

5- Do not use the old fashioned towel racks; instead hang towels on hooks. This method is so much faster and I personally think it looks better!

6- Have a schedule with everything, including linens. I do all the bedding every Friday (sometimes every other if too much "life" happens). I own double the amount of sheets and put on the new sheets right after I take off the old sheets. I wash all the sheets together. I usually do towels on Fridays too.

7- Never iron. Never iron. Never iron. We buy a lot of garments (especially my husband) that says "wrinkle free" (because he know I will not iron). Or, we set an alarm to move items out kid the dryer for folding and hanging as soon as it's finished drying. On my iPhone, I just click Siri and tell her to remind me that the clothes are done in x minutes. 

I have a system down for toy organization that I will blog about soon!