Take Control Organizing

In the last post we talked about setting a schedule to get the laundry done. Now we focus on getting other family members involved in the process!

There have been many times in my home where I it was left to me to get this done.  Now I have to say my dear husband is a great help and actually enjoys doing the laundry from time to time.  And if someone has a nasty stain, he is the one to go too!  But when I decided to get my children involved in the process, it really did made a difference.  It actually took less time and the chore felt less daunting.

Depending on the ages of your children will factor on how much they can actually help.  But I believe the earlier you start the better!  Children has young as 2-3 years can help sort clothes.

Here are a few tips:

• Make it the child’s responsibility to bring the clothes to the utility room.

• Have your children sort the clothes by color.  This is a great learning opportunity for smaller children.  Have them separate towels from the clothes.  What in this pile does not look like the others?  So many great lessons to be learned!

• If your children are old enough- have them be responsible for their own laundry.  My sister has two boys, both teenagers, she tells them, the weekends are yours, you do your laundry anytime during the weekend.  If they don’t do it, they suffer the consequences.  And believe me, they have!  Unfortunately, so have the people around them!

• Once the laundry is complete, have every family member put their own clothes away.  Set you your children’s closet and dresser drawers so this is easy for them to do.  The top drawer is all socks and underwear, the middle is pajama’s, the bottom are pants and t-shirts.

• I have heard different ideas for the towel dilemmas we may encounter.  One is to have each family member have their own color towel. Again, if your kids are older, they are responsible for their own towels.  It eliminates any fighting between siblings.  I also had a reader suggest towel charms for each family member. Another way to keep track of what belongs to whom.

• If you are teaching your kids to do the laundry, place a list of directions on how to run the washer and dryer.  Have pre-made bags of detergent ready to go.  Have a list of items that do not go into the dryer.

Tips on socks! This is a huge sore spot in my family!  My husband wants to have the socks for everyone to be rolled up and put together.  I understand this is easier.  My issue is the time.  I don’t have time to put everyone’s socks together.  His argument is it takes time to find the matching sock.  True.  My solution: buy all the same kind of sock in the same colors, no more wondering if they match, because they are all the same. So the next time you go to buy socks, remember it will be easier if they are all the same!  But we still have some issue with my daughters socks.  I have delegated this matching and rolling socks to my husband. He is now in charge of socks.  You can also delegate this task to your children.  They may have a lot of fun, searching for the missing sock.  You can also pin socks together before washing them.  This makes it easy because they are never apart from each other.

How do you get your family involved?  If you have a great tip, please share!  We would love to hear from you!

Happy Organizing!

Coming up: Recommend products for your Utility Room!

Recently I asked my readers, “what is your biggest organizing challenge?” Laundry fell into the top 2 headaches we have in running our households!

We all have it and most of us dread it!

To eliminate the nagging feeling of when is the laundry going to get done… Think about creating a system for your laundry.  Creating a system means creating a schedule.

Here are a few ideas to get you started!

• Decide on a schedule - do you prefer to do laundry during the week or leave it for the weekends?  There are pros and cons for each.  Doing a little each day means having your weekends free. On the flip side waiting until the weekend, means you do not have to worry about it during the week.  Some like to do a little bit of laundry everyday.  Others have designated days for different loads. For example; Mondays- towels, Tuesdays – adult clothes, Wednesdays- children’s clothes. The point is to have some kind of schedule you can follow as a guideline.  This will not always be the same every week as schedules change, but it’s a good starting point.
• Once you set a schedule, make sure your family is aware.  If you have decided Friday is the day, make sure all of the laundry is in by 8am! Family involvement will help maintain your system. More on this later.
• Do laundry from the beginning to the end. This does not matter if you haven chosen one day or every day of the week.  Finishing from beginning to end means all clothes washed that day are put away. By making it a priority to complete the loads means you will not accidently leave anything in the washer! And your utility area will stay neater and be more organized!
• Make sure each family member has their own hamper.  To eliminate some of the sorting, do the laundry by family member rather than putting all the clothes together.  First load belongs to Suzy, second load belongs to Johnny, and so on.  Buy hampers that are divided into sections.  Teach your family to put the whites in one section, darks in another. It can eliminate you from doing all of the sorting.

Quick Tip: Some will say to start your washer before you leave for work, and then when you come home, put in the dryer.  Well, I am one to not recommend this.  About 2 years ago, we had a flood in our house due to the washer machine.  The water never stopped filling up.  I was home, so I lucky caught it in time to where it did not cause too much damage..I can’t even imagine if I was not home, what the outcome would have been.  My tip: Run all of your appliances, washing machines, dryers, and dishwasher only when you are home!

What is your system at home?  Do you have something to share?  Believe me, mom’s all over are looking for ideas!  We would love to hear yours!!

NEXT BLOG POST:  Getting your family involved in helping with the laundry!