Once upon a time, I could do laundry one day a week. Once upon a time, hanging laundry was no big deal. Once upon a time, in order to have an insurmountable mountain of laundry, I would have to neglect the laundry pile for weeks on end.
No longer is this the case! A couple of days of a neglected laundry basket and I have Mount Washmore on my hands!
I may have mentioned here before the fact that I used to work off of a FLYlady-type schedule. It worked quite well until I had our fourth child (it was beginning to be somewhat difficult with 3 as well, but I did manage to keep it going).
With the birth of our 4th child, came a whole new way of life. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING, worked anymore. It was at this time I ran across Large Family Logistics. It was just what I needed to make my now larger-than-normal family run smoothly.
**If you would like to take a look for yourself follow these links**
OLD SITE ~ The left-hand sidebar is where the information on her Cleaning Days is.
NEW SITE ~ As far as I can tell she does not have all the info from the old site on here yet, but it is still worth a perusal.
I decided to follow her lead and make Monday my Big Laundry Day.
The idea behind this is that you do as much as you can that day (she calls it 4 by 4) and then simply maintain the rest of the week. Maintenance for me looks like about 2 loads per day.
Perhaps you are wondering how I manage the logistics of Big Laundry Day.
First off, I am an advocate of making the laundry room as pleasant as possible. You can take a look at a post I did several months back on transforming my laundry room. Your laundry room DOES NOT have to be the most dreary room in the house!
We currently have a BOYS ROOM and a GIRLS ROOM. We used to have a laundry basket in each of their rooms (and we may go back to this at some point). They filled it and took it down every morning when I yelled “Laundry Call!” However, now, they take their laundry to a central location (a larger laundry basket in my bedroom) as they tidy their rooms every morning. My oldest child takes the basket down for me (bless his heart!)
The Girls’ laundry basket and the Boys’ laundry basket (as well as another laundry basket for dh and I) sit downstairs on shelving. When I take things out of the dryer, I fold and put into the appropriate basket. When the baskets are full, I call for my oldest boy and my oldest girl and they put the laundry away for their respective room. (There is a 4 year gap between my BIGS and my LITTLES, thus the reason for only the BIGS putting away laundry) When they are finished putting the laundry away, they bring the baskets back down so we can start the process all over again.
I imagine there will come a day when I will have to rethink Big Laundry Day and logistics behind it, but for now this method manages to keep Mount Washmore looking like a small hill.
Ginger says
We will always have a small pile. we live in an apartment complex now. There is a washer and dryer downstairs for our use. SO, we use them. I do about 2 loads a day. That is just so it keeps it controled.
Regina says
I remember the days of Mount Washmore!!! Back int he day when my kids were home we had laundry glory! It seemed I could never catch up. The one thing I think is important is to fold and put away as soon as they come out of the dryer or off the line. If you ever start just piling them up it won’t be long before you have a Mount Digthewrinklepile to go along with the other!!
Fruitful Harvest says
Good Morning Amy~Great post! I’m still trying to figure the laundry thing out. I manage to get it washed…I just need to get more disiplined to fold and put it away. We are blessed that the bedrooms and the w/d are all up stairs.Blessings,Georgiann
Beth says
I’m a little late to the game on this one, but I thought I’d chime in. I have four kids also (my bigs are four years ahead of my littles, too!), and a garbageman husband. Laundry is a never ending battle here too. Here’s a short on how I do it:
We have a three-section laundry hamper in the kids’ bathroom that they sort their laundry in to whenever they get undressed (whites, colors, darks). My hubby and I have a hamper in our room that our laundry (and some kids’ laundry) goes in to. When I notice things getting full, I take our hamper and sort it into the three-section hamper. One section, when full, will fill our washer. So when one of the sections gets full, I throw it into the washer and run the load. Oh, and jeans (mostly in the winter time) go into a pile on the floor and get run separately. Towels have a basket in our room, and hubby has a small hamper for his work clothes (he washes those himself when it gets full). Some days everything gets full at the same time, so I end up doing three or four (or five or six) loads in one day. When clothes come out of the dryer, they get sorted on to our bed by person, laid out flat to avoid wrinkles. My oldest folds and puts away her own clothes, I fold mine and the baby’s clothes, and my hubby folds his and the two middle boys’ clothes.
Whew! That was long. Maybe I should turn it in to my own blog post!
.-= Beth´s last blog ..What’s in your crockpot? =-.
Amy says
Definitely turn it into a blog post! Other mamas would love to hear how you do it!