Because we have one washer and one dryer we do laundry 6 days a week. On the average we do at least 5 loads of laundry a day. Now this number goes up and down depending on the time of year, if we are night training someone, potty training someone, have an infant or the dreaded stomach flu is in the house!!!!! Summer is nice because we can hang clothes on the clothesline which makes laundry go a little faster.
Our laundry room is not very big but it serves the purpose. This is the one room in our house that we have never remodelled....except for a paint job. Someday I would like to give it a makeover, but so far there have been more pressing projects on our list. My dream laundry room??? Ceiling to floor shelves! If you know anything about me, you know that I like shelves.....a lot!!! My husband knows this too :)
I call it a laundry room but it is really a multi-purpose room. It has a closet where we store cleaning supplies, brooms, mops and vacuum cleaner. Another space (which used to be a closet) has shelves in which the top shelf is storage and the rest of the shelves hold the clothes of the kids who are not old enough to have their clothes in their room yet. Right now that is Brooke (almost 6) and Mikaya (4). Also because we still pick out their clothes (when we go out) it is handy to have them close by. This way we can also keep a close eye on the youngins while they are being trained to keep their shelves neat and tidy.
We also have a toilet and a large stainless steel single sink in this room. I like this.... and I don't. I don't like it because it always seems that when you need something from that room.....yup....someone's sitting on the potty :) But I am also very grateful to have that 3rd bathroom. It has come in handy many times!! I really like the big sink. It is very useful for multi purpose things. Everything and everybody who is greasy, muddy or just plain dirty goes in there to wash up. I have even been known to stick a dirty kiddo right in that sink to get them sparkling clean!!!! In order to reach the sink, the shorties hop on the toilet and wash, brush their teeth etc. We tried having a stool in there for awhile but because the space is so narrow, it just got in the way. The toilet makes a good stool anyway....as long as the lid isn't open!!!!!
We have a set of cupboards on one wall. In here we store craft and sewing supplies.
There is a countertop under the cupboards. This is something I really like about our laundry room. It's great place to fold and store folded clothes until they are put away. As our family grows it gets a little more challenging to fit things on there, but we make it work.
Under the countertop there are some drawers which we store things like "JUNK", batteries, light bulbs, crafts...etc. These drawers need some serious help!!! I need to get into them and reorganize them someday....but like I said....there are just more pressing matters :)
In between the two sets of drawers is an empty space in which we store our sewing machine and laundry baskets.
We hang a dark clothes hamper and a light clothes hanger on the handle of 2 drawers. I found these hampers at our local "Superstore" and I really like them because they don't take up too much space when they are empty.
Oh, and I can't forget the flooring...the WHITE flooring!!!! The white flooring that is usually (as you can see in the pictures) a light shade of BLACK!!!!! Ya....I would like to change that too someday :) Most of our main floor used to be white.....I am so glad it's only the laundry room and main bathroom now!
Now on to the way we actually DO laundry!! Our oldest 3 girls rotate on the laundry. One week on, two weeks off (not actually off as in nothing to do....oh no.....not around here!!!) We have a laundry closet in the main upstairs bathroom, a hamper in the boys room, downstairs bathroom, girls room and in the baby room. The boys are to bring up their clothes every morning and sort them into the right hamper. And nothing is SUPPOSED to be inside out. And if their clothes are wet for ANY REASON, they go on top of the washer. Whichever girl is doing the wash collects the clothes from the other hampers throughout the day.
Once the clothes are washed and folded they go on the countertop in individual piles and are put away first thing the next morning as part of the kids morning chores. Everyone puts away their own pile of clothes....except for Dad and Mom's pile because they are spoiled and it gets put on their bed :) The clothes that go in the laundry room shelves get put away while they are being folded because there is no room for them on the countertop. And the one doing laundry for the week puts away the clothes that belong in the baby room, kitchen and bathroom laundry.
You may ask who does the ironing???? Ummm.......no one....because.......WE DON'T IRON. Most of the clothes that we own are around home clothes so no need for ironing there. The cows don't really care if our clothes are ironed or not!!! And as for our going out clothes??? I concentrate on buying clothes that don't need ironing. I find for most clothes, if you hang them or fold them right out of the dryer they don't really get wrinkled. And if I do have a some sort of clothing that ends up on my pile a little more wrinkled than I would like, I just dampen cloth and stick it and the wrinkled item in the dryer for a couple of minutes and......that takes care of the wrinkles. I had a really bad experience with an iron once and it scarred me for life. If you would like to know about it I may tell you someday!!! And of course there are times where it is absolutely necessary to pull out the iron.
Oh and the socks...the humungous, gigantinormous pile of unmatched socks. Sorry...don't have a solution for that one!! If you do....please, PLEASE, PLEASE LET ME KNOW :)
3 comments:
Laundry is never ending, but nice to have a system that works! It seems our system has changed off an on over the years. I'm so thankful for a large capacity washer and dryer ...and right now sunshine to hang clothes outside. Ironing, yep, seems we have lots of it and we iron a basket full each week....call us city folk;-)
safety pins!! have on hand safety pins, as they get ready to b thrown n2 the basket to be washed have each child put their own socks on a safety pin and throw them in. It'll b a breeze. Never did it any other way. U wash them with safety pins on them and viola u got ur pairs done b4 hand!
Laundry....I hate Laundry!!! I have 9 kids, ages 13 to newborn. Socks are the worst! The best solution that I came up with is:
I buy each one of the kids a different style sock. You can see the different styles at the top of the socks, some are thinner knitting and some thicker, some longer and some short. Each child has their own style and they only have that style. All the socks with that particular style is theirs.
When a child's socks go bad and they need more socks, I buy a new pack of socks. We throw ALL of their old socks out *Even if they are still kinda good, unless we can buy a pack that's the same style.
I refuse to have huge amounts of multi-colored and patterned socks. It's just to time consuming and frustrating!! Well, not everyone may like my idea, but it's worked for me for the past 5 years.
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