Laundry

I recently heard a woman lament over her daily tasks, one of which was to throw in a load of laundry--every day.  I was shocked.  I realized that I have a great laundry system.  I learned by example while growing up and have added some of my own ideas.

1. Do laundry only once a week.  Pick a day and set it in stone.  Unless someone has an accident or we make an unusually messy mess, everything goes in our dirty clothes baskets and stays there until Tuesday.  I also keep a smaller basket with large holes all over it for ventilation in the laundry room for wet dirty things to avoid mold in the bedroom baskets.   BENEFITS:  1: Doing laundry only weekly reduces the volume of laundry because doing it more often gives you a chance to go looking for things to clean in order to make a full load.  2: You will also save energy because you are washing full loads rather than daily small loads.  3: More household order because when laundry is a daily event, it is always in some part of the process, which means you always have laundry out, which means a mess.  4: Children learn to economize by not changing clothes multiple times per day or throwing clean clothes in the laundry basket to avoid putting it away when they know they have a whole week before it will be returned to them.
2. Allow your children to fold their own laundry and put it away.  Pick an age when your children are old enough to start folding their own laundry and deliver them a pile of freshly washed laundry.  They need to fold it and put it away.  We started this at age 6 in our family.  Teach them the basics and then let them do it even if it's not 'right' or 'good.'  Be patient.  The goal is not to have picturesque dresser drawers.  The goal is to raise independent children.  BENEFITS:  1: Children learn life skills and gain confidence as they master those skills.  2: Children gain a sense of ownership and pride in their possessions and management of life.  3: Your workload is lightened.
3. Allow your children to wash their own laundry when they are mature enough.  This isn't always an age-based decision.  Some of my children were ready to start doing their own laundry at age 11 and some not until 13.  Just like me, they get one day a week to do their laundry.  BENEFITS:  1: Children learn to use the laundry machines and basic laundry principles.  (My daughter learned this lesson the hard way recently when she washed new jeans with something white and had to figure out how to reverse the damage).  2:  Again, children take ownership.  They learn that there is no laundry fairy.  3:  Again, children learn to economize by not producing more laundry than they are willing to wash and put away.
4. To work up to #3, allow your children to wash a load of something a couple of years before they are ready to do laundry.  We started with the throw rugs and towels.  One child is responsible for washing all the bathroom towels or all the throw rugs once a week and putting them away neatly.  BENEFITS:  1: They learn laundry basics in a simple setting.  It's hard to mess up towels.  2: Your load is lightened. 
5. Develop a system and teach your family to use it.  Have a designated place for dirty clothes, sorting laundry, clean laundry (I have a dirty basket in each bedroom and a 4-bag sorter in the laundry room and two baskets for clean things).  Make policies about how and where laundry is to be folded.  (My pet peeve is laundry in the living room so we have a rule that they have to fold it in their bedrooms or in the laundry room.  My other pet peeve was piles of clothes all over the floor during laundry day, which motivated me to buy the laundry sorter and additional baskets)  BENEFITS:  1: You don't have to wander the house looking for stray laundry on laundry day.  2: Clean and dirty clothes aren't getting mixed up.  3: Regular systems streamline the time you spend on chores because you aren't thinking and solving problems as you go along.  Decide once how it's done and then turn on auto-pilot.

I appreciate my mom's example of laundry once a week.  It makes my laundry day full, but it frees up the rest of the week for other tasks.  One thing I wish she had done was to allow me to do my own laundry.  We had to fold all the household laundry once it was washed, but I had to call her when I went away to college to figure out the washing machine.  One of my favorite things to say to kids when they complain about helping with the laundry (because they will at first) is "You don't have to do it as long as you don't wear clothes."  So far no one's taken me up on that.