If there’s one thing large families have, it’s laundry. There’s really no way around it, short of joining a nudist colony. I have 11 people (some of them quite tall – in case you hadn’t realized that tall people have WAY bigger laundry!), all of whom are using towels, sleeping on sheets, wearing clothes, and sometimes wetting beds (those are short people doing that, by the way – NOT the tall ones).
Over the years, I have used a lot of different laundry systems. I recently had a reader ask me how I managed to keep up with the laundry, and I started to link to THIS POST, only realize that wasn’t how we do laundry anymore. Our current system is based on the system in the link, but I found that having the girls do only the girls’ laundry and the boys do only the boys’ laundry wasn’t as efficient as I would have liked. So, this new and improved system I have dubbed:
“It’s your day, do all the laundry!”
{and yes, somedays I think we need a laundromat in our house!}
So, the way this works is if it is your laundry day, you do the laundry that needs to be washed – yours, mine, and the other guy’s! Let me break this down for you:
Until my oldest started college, our schedule was:
Monday & Thursday – Mom’s Days
Tuesday & Friday – Blake’s Days
Wednesday & Saturday – Megan’s Days
With Blake in college, it’s been difficult for him to do laundry and keep it up throughout the day. So, I’m getting ready to move him to Saturdays and add in the 12 year old to the laundry routine. So, it will look like this:
Monday – Mom
Tuesday – Megan (age 16)
Wednesday – Melia (age 12)
Thursday – Mom
Friday – Megan
Saturday – Blake
We only sort laundry into two piles –
CLOTHES
TOWELS & SHEETS (and anything that resembles a towel or a sheet)
(yes, gasp all you want – it works!)
We’ve been sorting this way for years for several reasons. It is easier to manage and makes for simple loads that are full, and it doesn’t require a lot of thought. In my chapter on Systems in my book Home Management for the Homeschool Mom, I encourage moms to put as much as you can on autopilot. That’s what these 2 piles represent – easy, peasy autopilot!
I require 2 loads start to finish every day. If you can get in more, great, but “2 all the way through” is the minimum.
Our bedrooms are pretty small, so laundry is thrown into a pile in the hall and gathered from there every morning (and sometimes throughout the day if need be). We do not have room for laundry baskets in the rooms themselves, so this is the method we’ve come up with to keep the laundry in a centralized location and easy to pick up.
If it’s your day, you gather from the hall after everyone has done their Morning Chores – that way you have all the jammies that need washing, any sheets that need stripped, and any clothes that were tucked away in the bedrooms crying out to be washed. You start a load, switch it near lunch time and start another, then switch again during the afternoon tidy up so that the first load out of the dryer can be put away during that time. The last load comes through right before Nighttime Chores so that that load can also be put away.
We fold on the couch. We have a huge couch, so it works well as a staging area:
We bring the basket to the couch and sort and fold into these piles:
Bathroom Towels
Kitchen Towels
Napkins
Junk Towels (these are the cleaning towels that go in a basket in the laundry room bathroom – they’ve been called “junk towels” for years because, well, they’re junky!)
Baby’s Blankets & Burp Rags
Boys’ Clothes
Girls’ Clothes
Mom’s & Dad’s & Baby’s Clothes
(often, the clothes are all sorted into 3 baskets unless there are very few in one of the piles)
Once sorted, whoever is in charge of laundry for the day calls several different children (usually younger ones) to put away towels in their respective areas. For the clothes, ALL of the children who are capable of helping are called to help. For the girls, the older ones each put away their own clothes, and share the responsibility of putting away the toddler’s clothes (one girl manages the toddler’s clothes that go in the drawers, the other handles the clothes that hang up in the closet). For the boys, I or my oldest son go in with them and direct traffic – sorting out each boys’ clothes and handing the piles to them to put away. There are 5 boys in one room and let’s face it – boys would stash clothes wherever they could find a spot and call it good. In fact, it’s best if I am the one directing the putting away because even my almost 19 year old seems to be able to stash with the best of them. (Have I taught this child nothing?!)
Baskets are returned to the laundry room and stacked, ready to haul the next load when finished.
The end!
Well, there’s never really an end because after all, it is laundry and we are a large family.
(Please, tell me I’m not the only one who takes photos of the laundry room when ALL the laundry is done to save that moment for posterity on Instagram & Facebook just to prove every now and then for 2 seconds, I have no laundry to do!)
Read my review of our large family washing machine!
Need a few more laundry ideas for your large family?
Check out my Mega Laundry Post!
Alicia says
Oh how helpful those big kids are!! Our 5 are 2 to 11, so I’m just thankful the oldest 4 can fold & put away their own clothes! I honestly think it would drive me bonkers to deal with little bits of laundry every day. So, what’s working now for us is…one day a week, I wash all the kids’ clothes. It’s a lot! But it’s one day…we make a big pile in the living room & have a clothes folding party ending with ice cream after everything is put away. A different day of the week, it’s mom and dad clothes and hot stuff. It all gets piled on our bed & at night, I fold and put away, which goes pretty fast. Of course, there are sometimes loads here & there on other days, which often stay in laundry baskets until a fold/put away day. But, those mega laundry days are so worth it to me because it it consolidated on 2 days a week! And never on Monday! (: (: The big deal to me is that it is folded & put away ONE time each week.
I’m sure this would make some mommas bonkers! I decided long ago that the system should serve me, not the other way around. So, I can see how we each need our own process to meet our unique family needs!! Glad to have you back Amy! I hope little Mercy is doing oh so very well!
Korie says
Nice job! I’m sure the simple two piles helps make it easier for your kids to do the laundry. I have three little kids and feel like there is always laundry I’m doing. How do you handle stains? I’m terrible at getting out stains and my husband is sensitive to scents and dyes so I’m not sure what to do, Have any thoughts? Do you have a system for dealing with those stained clothes?
Andrea says
Good question because it seems to me all stain removers that could actually work have very strong scents. Any ideas out there?
Amy says
We use a stain remover. I know people who swear by soaking in Oxyclean. But if I were you, I’d look up vinegar options.
Reggie says
I use Nature Bright by Shaklee. It works best in conjunction with their all natural laundry detergent, Basic-L. My only word of caution is DO NOT USE Nature Bright on your cloth diapers! It affects their absorbency. No, I am not a shameless distributor, I just found a natural product that knocks the socks off store bought detergent! Can I get an amen?!
Korie says
Thanks for the advice! I know a lot of people who like shaklee!
MADELYN t. says
This is how I get out stains:
Cover the stain in original Dawn dish soap (make sure it isn’t the kind with bleach!) and then cover the dish soap with baking soda. Leave it overnight, and wash as normal the next day.
It really works! It even works on clothes that have already been washed and dried! I’ll just check clothes as they come out of the dryer to see if they still have stains and set them aside to treated. It even gets the grease stains out of my husbands work clothes! Cheap and it works. That’s what I like!
R says
There’s a trick hotels use to remove lipstick, mascara, and other tough stains. They melt one of their small bar soaps in a small amount of water (it should become the consistency of instant pudding) and smear on the stain. Wash in cold water. It works and you can use an undocumented soap. You can also wet the garment and scrub the stain with bar soap, but it’s a lot more work.
R says
Should say unscented soap. Auto correct messed it up.
Lacey S says
Thanks for sharing your system! Its so fun to hear how others do things so we can borrow ideas to tweak our own routines. I am always looking for a way to streamline. Especially since I have 3 boys and you are so right about their ability to “stash” anywhere. Or just to think that “in the general vicinity of the drawer” is the same as putting things away. This amazing ability also had me remove the “folding” phase for kids clothes. I sort into piles and let them shove their clothes away, nothing ever stays folded so I have given up the practice! 🙂
Reggie says
That is a great system! Having a large washer has been an immense blessing for this mama also! I will say though, I have never fully understood the laundry conundrum that seems to plague households, large and small alike. It has truly not been an issue around here and that’s in a family of eight. This is what works for us:
– If it ain’t dirty, wear it again!
– minimize the number of clothes/outfits per child
– Give laundry it’s day! In other words, don’t attempt baking, cleaning the bathroom, fixing the plugged kitchen sink AND laundry all on the same day. You may end up with piles of clean clothes, but I bet you they stay piles indefinitely!
– If all else fails, join the nudist colony…JOKING!!! Mostly….?
Amy says
I love this idea! One of my next videos was going to be about how we do laundry…which is exactly this! Maybe I’ll just link to you now. 😉