Time Saving Laundry Tip
June 10, 2009 by Karen Weideman
Filed under Laundry
Now that I have three children, it seems the laundry is endless. Well, honestly, it pretty much is (sigh). Doing laundry for five people can be a bit time consuming, but I’ve found a solution to some of the madness and it’s saving me some time.
My tip for saving time with laundry is to wash the clothes from one bedroom at a time. On Monday, I got the dirty clothes from my 11-year-old’s room and washed his clothes. The only clothes in the pile were his and the only clothes that needed to be put away were his.
Doing only one room of laundry at a time saves you time because you’re not wandering around the house putting things away. Just think of all the time you’d save if you did this with every load of laundry. Hopefully, the kids are around when their laundry is ready to be put away. With my 11-year-old, I put the clothes on his bed. He hangs up the shirts while I fold everything else. Then sometimes he helps to put the other items in his dresser drawers. With my 3 and 5-year-old, I usually just have them put away their socks, underwear, and pajamas. I fold and hang up the other clothes.
Of course, my system is not fool proof. With kids, sometimes they spill food on themselves or have a potty accident. I try not to do half loads, so I’ll throw in a bunch of other clothes. This throws off my system a little bit and takes more time, but it does save energy and water to do a full load.
If you’re able, give this system a try and let me know how it works for you. Or if you have any laundry saving tips of your own, feel free to leave those too. We can all learn from one another.
For more Works for Me Wednesday ideas, visit We Are THAT Family.
image from sxc.hu
I like this idea and am wondering if I could make it work for us. hmmmm.
I’ve semi retired my dryer of late and staring using my clothes line. Helps out on the electric bill.
Good idea. Our approach aspires for the same efficiencies but in a different manner. We have about 10 small stackable “dollar store” baskets in the laundry room. We sort clothes “by kid” or “by adult” and by type (socks, shorts, underwear, etc.) in the laundry room in the baskets. We hang clothes that need to be hung “right out of the dryer” in the laundry room to minimize wrinkles. Once the basket begin to fill up, which happens quickly with three kids, we either take all the the baskets to their particular rooms or, better yet, ask the kids take a basket of “their” stuff upstairs so that they can put them where they belong.
What a great idea, although it won’t work very well for us. I have 3 boys who share a room (and create a lot of laundry) and my daughter would be hard pressed to fill one load by herself. What I do is kids laundry on Monday and Thursday, mom and dad on Tuesday and towels, sheets, misc. whenever I have a moment to throw them in.
I love Wednesdays!!