Movie Mom

Laundry System

One very difficult challenge in out home has always been laundry. After years of not being able to find socks and under clothing that get lost in the enormous never ending laundry pile, we developed a laundry system that works.

We sort the white and lights in the same pile. Then we put the darks and the reds together in a pile, put the towels and wash cloths together, it is a good idea to sort dark towels from light ones into two seperate piles. I don't always have time to seperate them. I put all the bed linens in a pile together, but will wash the lights and darks seperately. We have a lot of laundry there are 11 of us so we use large clothes hampers to sort the clothes into. They are the same size so I can stack them inside each other when I am not using them.

I put each pile in a hamper on laundry day while I'm waiting to switch loads from washer to dryer. This alleviates having to deal with piled of clothes on the floor while waiting to be washed. Another way we sort the clothes is all if the socks, underwear, bras, and panties go in a pile seperate from the rest of the laundry. This will prevent the most important items from getting lost, and children having to go to school in the morning without matching socks... or socks at all.

Each bedroom has a laundry hamper to hold the laundry that belongs to the people who share that room. This will make it easier to find specific clothing items when needed, also the teenagers will often do their own laundry so it is good that they have their own hamper and there clothes are seperate from the other people who are in the house.

Keep a hamper near the bathroom for wet towels and washcloths only. We keep a basket in the laundry room near the kitchen for the dishtowels and dish cloths. As we start a load of laundry we take the color of the load from the underwear pile and add that color to the load that is washing, we do that with each load washed until the underwear pile is gone.

We have a system for after the clothes come out of the dryer. We went to Lowes and bought a large shelf for around $70.00. It is a very sturdy shelf and has room enough to put baskets. The baskets are labeled with the names of each perosn that shares a bedroom. There is a basket for each bedroom, and a basket a basket for bed linens, towels and wash cloths.

There are two smaller baskets. They fit on the smaller shelves. They hold bras, pantoes, underwear, and socks. In a perfect world I would put all of the clothes away as soon as they come out of the dryper. However in my world I need a system to keep them organized intil I have time to put them away. When i use the system, my sweetheart and children are running through the house panic stricken looking for a specific shirt for school or work. They will find their clean clothes in a basket marked with their name or their under clothes will be in the designated basket. This system has brought much order to our lives.