Guest Post Written by Erin Odom of The Humbled Homemaker
Laundry has always been one of the areas of my home that always—literally—piles up on me. I try to do one load each day, but if I miss just one day, it seems I have a mountain of clothes and linens waiting for me the next morning.
I used to have a separate dirty clothes hamper for my girls’ clothes stored in their bedroom closet. At the time, it made sense. I would dress and undress them in their room, and I would just toss their clothes into their hamper.
But I found that if I got a day behind on laundry, I might get to the point where almost all their clothes were dirty.
My solution? I now have one set of family hampers in our master bedroom closet.
I store our dirty clothes in 3 separate hampers: one for whites, one for light colors and one for dark colors. I use a gentle, plant-based detergent (Sun Free—which is SUPER CHEAP at Big Lots!) on all our clothes, so there was really no reason to separate the girls’ laundry from ours anyway.
I’ve found we all have just what we need clean when we need it now. And I kind of like not having SO many of the girls’ clothes to put away at one time.
If we ever have a big enough closet to do it, I’d love to transition to a family closet.
How do you streamline your family’s laundry? Do you keep your kids’ clothes separate from yours, or do you mix everything together? Which do you think is easier?
Erin is a believer in Jesus Christ and stay-at-home wife and mom of two little redheaded girls. She loves mission work, speaking Spanish, breastfeeding, cloth diapering and researching how to live a healthier lifestyle. She blogs about parenting, natural living and homemaking at The Humbled Homemaker.
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Great post Erin! We keep all our family laundry together too, but in the laundry room. My closet is stuffed to the brim! Ha, ha!
Enjoyed your post! We do two separate clothes baskets. One is in the master bedroom, with my clothes, my husband’s, and all the towels & whites. It’s divided by color, as usual. Our other basket is in the baby’s room, but I keep clothes for both he and my toddler in it. I find it’s much easier to keep the laundry separate because it makes putting the clothes away a lot easier on me. Putting laundry away is the one part of laundry that I always procrastinate, so this keeps thing simple and prevents procrastination.
I have a large laundry room so I keep hampers and sort them into the hampers as well. We have one for dark towels, white towels, light clothes, dark clothes, and kitchen towels. 🙂
I just started this new system and I’m loving it. I gave each bedroom a milk crate about 12x12x12. Very small for 2 kids sharing a room. When it gets filled up they bring it to the laundry room and sort it into the separate baskets. All I have to do is look into the room once a day and see if a basket is full and ready to wash. If I notice one is getting close I tell them all to bring their baskets in. I prefer to do a little bit of everybodies in a load. Most of them are old enough to put their own clothes away. 10, 8, 7, 6 and 2. Yes, lots of laundry at our house. It has kept the laundry manageable and less frustrating for me and I don’t have that one day that leads to 3-4 days with piles of clothes in the hall waiting to be washed.
What a great idea!! I’ve written before about how my girls put their own laundry away, and have recently started sorting theirs, and I love it!! Wish I had started earlier! Ha!! I want to get a hamper or two for the laundry room for kitchen towels, etc.
Love all these ideas! Our laundry room is teeny tiny or I would use it! I have to use a hanging wetbag for the diapers in there! I hope to get my 3-year-old to start helping put her clothes away soon. That is the hardest part! haha. 🙂
Yeah, my girls were 6 and 4 when they started
Oh, you don’t even want to know about my family’s laundry system. For some reason, laundry is an area in which I’m really picky. Socks not turned right side out and clothes in the wrong bins are major peeves. But I’ve hardly ever met a spot I can’t beat!
Ha!!
I will definitely look into putting this system in place in my house. We only separate clothes from linen/kitchen towels. The latter gets boiled because my mother ingrained that habit in me. I think your way definitely streamlines the laundry process. I just thought about getting one the IKEA recycling cloth bins. These have three sections that I could relabel as whites, colors and delicate. An AHA! moment right before your eyes 🙂
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It always surprises me how many “common sense” ideas, like Erin’s, that I never think of on my own!! Ha!
We finally decided to have a family hamper. It is so great with saving time. We don’t have the space for a family closet, but I hope we will have that someday. For now, each child has their own tote that they will take their folded laundry to their room in. They love doing this and it helps from having clothing all over the floor on the way to their room.
I like to have laundry hampers in each bedrooms and especially in the bathrooms. Sorting clothes by person makes easier to organize and put away the laundry. I love the various types of laundry hampers and how they add to the decor in the rooms.