laundry!!!

How old are the older kids? When I was a kid about 10-12 on I did my own laundry Also the 'not enough' is it not enough clean, or not putting away their stuff so they can find it?

Each of my kids have set laundry days. The older ones have on their chore chart to put in the laundry room two pairs of jeans on their 'off' days. I ask for whites & pink/yellow/red on the off days {about two times a week} and we haven't had a problem yet of running out of socks. I have those mesh bags for the socks so that I don't have to worry about sorting. :)

I do laundry 4 times a week. Tuesdays I wash the younger kids clothes. Wednesday I wash the older kids clothes. Friday I wash the grown-ups clothes. Sunday I wash bedding. There are clothes hampers in every room. My youngest daughters sort the laundry for me and the older kids carry it to the laundry room. I only buy white socks in multiple sizes. Easy to match-up and easy to replace.

I have to do 4 loads a DAY or I get the "I have no socks, I have not undies, where are the towels?". There are 8 of us here. My oldest ds is 16 and in sports and crosstraining so he has at least 2 sweaty outfits a day ontop of his school clothes, work clothes, and pjs. He helps a lot by switching loads over and bringing the clean baskets up and on the weekends or whenever he "needs" a certain item washed he will wash a load to get it done. The other kids are required to always put the dirty laundry in the schute and every day somebody has to switch loads and bring up clean as a chore. Putting laundry away on the other hand has proven to be impossible at my house. I have resorted to every kid has a basket and you are in charge of putting your own basket of laundry away. Mostly they just take the basket to their room and dig for stuff as they need it. I sort it and put it in the right basket and they come and get it when I'm done. I have to wash towels everyday and I wish I had more. We try to hang them up and it doesn't work well becauset the younger kids grab the wrong towel or knock them all down or use them to stand on. My worst nightmare is SOCKS! I have 8 pairs of feet in the house and none are the same size. I try to buy all white and that didn't help. I tried to buy a special color stripe for each kid so I knew who was not matching the socks before they hit the laundry pile and guess what none of them were. My husband doesn't even always match them. I have a large hamper that is filled with socks that have not been matched and on the days that they are asking for socks I send them to the hamper to find a pair. We all hate matching socks. I have tried to make a game and reward the kid who finds the most matches but they get sloppy and try to sneak mismatches in.

I FORGOT about those mesh bags!!!! I actually bought some with the purpose of keeping each kids socks together to make them easier to sort. Then I was going to sew a color coded label of some sort on....that was over a year ago! Thankyou for the reminder!

There are 8 of us, and I too refuse to do laundry every day. I usually do it every other day. The children all have baskets in their rooms, and are required to put their own clothes away. It does help that the house we're renting until we sell our house in Fl has 2 washer/dryer hook-ups and that they had a washer/dryer upstairs, and mine are hooked up down stairs. The upstairs washer and dryer are in the bathroom so the older boys will at least get the dirty clothes in the machine or on the floor in front of it. My biggest problem is getting the time to get it folded. With 3 teens and 3 toddlers I'm always doing something other than laundry. Doesn't help that I hate to do laundry :-) I had the problem of the older boys never having socks. I tried white with marking their first initial on them, didn't help. So they aren't allowed to pick out the same brand anymore. That way when I fold them I know what belongs to who. I'm going to have to start the same system with the girls because they wear the same size socks. I do towels the same day I do clothes as well. SOmetimes there are too many jeans for one load, but not enough for 2, and the towels are blue, so I put them in with the jeans. May not work for everyone, but it works for me :-) Maybe instead of doing laundry only two days, you could go to every other, of Mon, Wed, Fri then you won't have as much to do in one day. I will tell you before we moved and had our house on the market I was doing laundry first thing every morning, starting it when I got up, I only had two loads a day and was done with it, folded and everything, by about 9, or 9:30. I think everyone has to find their own system for laundry. I presonally would love to have someone come in and just do the laundry and clean the bathrooms :-) Shelley, Mom to 6

Forgot to mention: I have a laundry basket outside of each of the two doors to the laundry room. My five boys' rooms are on this level and I put their clothes in it after I fold. They are responsible for sorting and putting it up. I also have in the hallway one of those hampers that have three dividers so that they can sort as they go. In the laundry room itself, I have three laundry hampers for {1}whites, {2} red/yellow/pink and {3} darks. When they bring their laundry to me, they place them in the hamper it needs to go in. I haven't gotten behind in laundry - even when my dryer was down for a day and a half! :banana: We are a family of eleven, so I feel like I need to keep it caught up! :laundry:

at age 12 everyone gets to do their own laundry. my 16yo ds pays his 9yo sister to do his, lol! everyone gets a towel with their name embroydered on it and each one is a different color. they hang it on a hook in the bathroom after they use it to be used again. i do the girls laundry on monday and the boys on thurs, including their sheets and towels. everyone has a cubby and i fold and put the clean clothes in the cubby. they are supposed to take it to their closets, but usually they just dress right there in the laundry room. i dont care because then i dont have to collect it! everyone has a dirty basket in their closet and one in each bathroom. i was tired of dirty clothes on the bathroom floor! i do my dh and mine on wed. wed morning is my morning off. i put a cute sweat suit on and i scrapbook and watch oprah while my toddlers play in the playroom. i do my laundry during the commercials. i do the breakfast dishes while the kids eat breakfast and whatever doesnt get done waits for tomorrow. no beds, nothing. its my favorite morning of the week!

oh yeah, everyone has a different brand of socks & tshirts, nike, adidas, target, costco, etc. that way i know whose is whose and they are easy to match. when i sort laundry, i only have darks and lights and special - anything that needs to be washed differently, like reds or handwash. heres a funny: when my 2 oldest daughters were little and the same size i always had white underware for one daughter and colored underware for the other. when my oldest was having a hard pre-teenager day she burst into tears and said, "how come i always have to have white underware?" i always say it's my fault she has drawers full of VERY colorful underware now that shes old enough to buy her own. (and wash it! lol):laundry:

I'll join the club! Laundry is the worst! Thankfully, I have lots of help...nobody escapes laundry duty. We are a family of 10, and laundry day is every Thursday. I refuse to have to do laundry more than one day a week! Unfortunately, laundry day is an all day event! My two teens gather all the laundry first thing in the morn. My three preschoolers have the job of sorting, while I keep the three babies from jumping into the sorting! Between my two teens, and I, we keep the laundry going all day. In the afternoon, my teens fold everything and carry the baskets into the bedrooms. I put the laundry away. By dinner, laundry is completed! Socks is always a problem. I may try one of those mesh bags! My six little ones all wear the same size socks. I put the girls in pinks and purples, and the boys in navy blue. I also keep bedding for a seperate day, usually Fri. morn. I do one load of boys' dark bedding, and another of girls' pastel bedding. It's done by lunch, so not a big deal. I am a huge neat freak, and hate clutter of any kind. I like to get the laundry done and out of the way!

Thanks, Ladies for reminding me of all that needs to be done here! LOL! No, seriously you all have inspired me to get a move on and get some stuff organized! Even though we are only a family a four, we run a 9 room motel so we have 11 more beds and 9 more bedrooms to clean everyday (if we are lucky!) so we are in desparte need of a "laundry system"...our laundry room is tiny and it's filled with Hotel stuff so the family always has a hard time getting in and out, let alone get any of own laundry done, so there are a lot of "jammie days" around here (ROFL!) I'll let you know what I come up with but a laundry shoot with 2 washers and 2 dryers sounds like heaven right about now! Thanks, again, for the inspiration! Good luck to all who struggle with like I do and God Bless to those of you who have it under control (I'm so jealous :) ) C.