Family and Laundry!
February 3, 2010 by Nikki
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!
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3 Responses to “Family and Laundry!”
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Great tips. Also get your kids involved by requiring them to fold the laundry (if there is clean laundry to be folded) while they watch tv. My mom did this for/to my sister’s and I growing up and went so far as to hide the remote control in the basket of clean clothes to be folded! Kids are never too young to fold socks…it’s like a game of memory!
I have a simple and cheap solution for the “towel dillema”, we use clothes pins with the name one it and attach them to the towel. It works !
Thank you for your comments, you both bring great tips! I love the idea of hiding the remote control in the laundry basket! That would certainly give the kids incentive to get their work done! Thank you both for contributing! Happy Organizing!