Create A Laundry System that Works for YOU
Laundry doesn’t have to mean an overwhelming mountain of clothes!
Finding a system that works for you may take some trial and error, but there are ways to think about setting up your system that ensure greater success.
The best thing you can do is take a good long look at your current system and see what you should change.
Here is how I have our laundry set up in this house, with this floor plan, to work with our schedules, seasons, and children’s ages. See how many qualifiers?
That means that the “perfect” system you find on Pinterest might not work for you. And your perfect system might not work next year. Or in your next house. Or when you add a baby. Or during swim team season. It’s something you will set up and might have to tweak as time goes by.
Here’s what we do:
Every child has his/her own hamper. The bigger kids have a big hamper; our youngest has a very small hamper that he can carry up and down the steps when it’s full. We have NO hamper in the bathroom because a) we don’t need it and b) I don’t want to sort clothes after washing.
We do not sort clothes based on light/dark/delicate because… they’re kid’s clothes. They take a beating, and I would rather make the laundry easy for the kids than worry about a potentially pink shirt.
I wash all household things: towels/rugs/washcloths/rags/masks/kitchen towels/sheets/winter coats/etc. so the children are only responsible for washing their own personal day-to-day laundry (learn how to teach your children to do laundry here!).
I have a kitchen hamper under our sink. We throw all kitchen linens and dirty masks in there, and we do cloth napkins for all meals, so I wash this bin just about every day.
I wash all bathroom towels and rugs when I clean the bathroom. Since I’m a minimalist wanna-be I don’t have extras. This means I wash them and replace them same day.
Sheets: My sheets are done regularly. Judge me if you want, but our kid’s sheets are not. Something’s gotta give… they get in them each night straight from the bath/shower, so… yeah, I won’t admit how (in)frequently I wash the kids’ sheets! We have one flannel set and one cotton set per bed (minimal), so all beds are stripped, washed, and remade the same day.
Winter and fall/spring coats (and sneakers) are washed way more often than I’d like. We have play-in-the-mud and stomp-in-every-puddle kids, and we have been hiking every Saturday and Sunday, so I wash these juuuust about weekly, which feels like every day.
I wash my clothes and my husband’s clothes, and I fold it all, but I don’t (usually) put my husband’s clothes away. Why? Because DELEGATE!
This works for us, for now.
In different houses we did things differently. Here are 3 quick examples:
In our Pennsylvania house the laundry room was a few steps from the kitchen, so we had NO hamper in the kitchen; we just walked the kitchen laundry to the laundry room (hamper in there).
In our New Jersey house the children were ages 4 and under and all the bedrooms were very close together, so we had a communal hamper in the hallway between the bedrooms. This meant I sorted clothes after drying, but with our oldest 2 sharing a room, and the baby’s clothes so easily identifiable from theirs it was easy work.
In California it was so dry that I could leave wet clothes in the washer for 2 days without any problems. My husband traveled a LOT, we were a family of 4, and the kids’ clothes were so small. The combination of these things meant I often did laundry every other day or every third day here, just because I could.
So here are some things to think about when revamping your personal laundry system:
Identify problem areas.
—Where do dirty clothes collect? Do I need a hamper there or do I want to teach different habits?
—Do I have special circumstances: foster dogs; live on a farm; kids who play sports; special uniforms; dry cleaning; someone with a job that makes clothes dirty (art teacher, mechanic, etc.); winter gear; hiking family; etc. How do these circumstances affect laundry, and what can I do to streamline the process?
Plan for household laundry. Decide how often you want to wash these things and put them on your calendar or job list. Identify what’s working and what needs to change.
—sheets and blankets – how often? extra sets or not? All at once or one set a day?
—throw blankets & sofa pillow covers – how often?
—towels – how many? how often? in with personal laundry or separate?
—bathroom linens & rugs – all at once or each bathroom separately? extra sets?
—kitchen laundry – where to store it? how much? how often?
—these days we are all dealing with masks – where to put dirty masks to ensure they’re washed appropriately?
Make thoughtful choices about buying clothes.
—How many clothes do we all really need? Less clothes mean you can’t wait too long between laundry loads.
—Socks. In our house each person has their own identifiable set of socks because they are inevitably taken off in the living room, where they multiply at night ;) and eventually end up in the kitchen hamper, needing to be sorted later.
—Easily identifiable clothes. If you have children in about the same size and choose NOT to give each child a separate hamper, consider some way to mark or identify their clothes. Our two oldest are only 14 months apart in age. They typically choose red/black/grey and pink/purple respectively, but when they get matching Philadelphia Eagles gear or Christmas PJs I always write “J” or “M” on the tags.
—Easy to wash and wear. I personally no longer buy anything that will shrink or wrinkle. Wool? Nope. Linen? Nope! Corduroy? Nope. I’m not spending one more brain cell on laundry than necessary, and I’m not spending one more minute ironing than necessary.
Think about the layout of your house.
—Do we have a family closet? Do kids share a room? How can I streamline shared spaces?
Where do I need a hamper? Where can I eliminate one?
Think about how you prefer to break down this job.
—Would I rather do one whole load a day, or save for a whole day of laundry?
—Would I rather do one load start to finish per day (put one load into the washer, dry it, fold it and put it away) or have multiple loads in different stages of completion per day (meaning every day I: start one load, move the wet load to dry, fold the dry load , and put away load 4)?
—Do I want to sort clothes after folding or give each person a hamper?
—Who else can help me with this job? How much or little of it can I delegate? Get your children involved- check out my steps to teach them how to do laundry.
—How can I anchor this job to make it part of my routine?
—What part of this multi-step job trips me up, and how can I change that?
Make your house work for you! Think outside the box! Find creative solutions!
There are no right or wrong solutions! Here are some outside-the-box examples:
One mom had 4 little kids who wore 3 outfits a day: uniforms to school, play clothes, and PJs. After she and her husband split she was drowning in laundry. She turned her dining room into a shared closet for all four kids, and it made her life so much easier. They’re older now and want more privacy, but this worked for her for years.
One mom has a 2nd floor hall closet laundry. She eliminated all hampers and taught her kids to put dirty clothes directly into the washing machine. When it was full, she ran it.
One mom has 3 boys in baseball. She put a hamper in the hallway JUST for the white baseball pants, so they’re separate and easy to stain treat and bleach.
Which reminds me: I keep a bottle of Shout next to our hamper and my husband and I treat spots before putting the clothes in the hamper. I used to keep a bottle next to baby’s hampers for spit-up stains, too.
Another family with four children has a hamper in each child’s bedroom AND a 4-bin hamper in their hall bathroom. Each bin is labeled with a child’s name, so clothes are still easily sorted before washing, but the children can undress in the privacy of the bathroom.
Moms have been making their homes work for them forever. My great aunt had a family of 7 in a 3 bedroom house. The girls only had space in their room to sleep, so the basement was converted into a shared closet, and most clothes and accessories were shared willingly.