I’ve definitely mentioned how I put away our clean laundry (I don’t fold it!), but I never actually walked you through how I get all that laundry done. I’m gonna attempt to do this, so bear with me.
A few years ago I saw an amazing deal on Amazon for a 6-pack of plastic laundry baskets. The tall kind.
I figured they would be easier to schlep up and down the stairs than the wide ones were, so I spent $30 and got my 6 baskets (I told you it was a good deal). People thought I was crazy to buy so many baskets… and maybe I was, but I knew that you really cannot have too many laundry baskets… especially when you work full-time without household help and have to do your own laundry.
Since we’ve been married, I really haven’t been all that good about folding laundry in a timely manner. It just wasn’t a priority for me and I guess all the wrinkles didn’t really bother me. So, after the laundry was washed it would hang out in the basket. Then when we needed something we would dig through the basket and find what we needed.
This system didn’t last too long, because as soon as we knew it, we had 3 kids and a ton more laundry.
Sorting and Storing Dirty Laundry
We’ve reached the point where if I don’t keep up with washing laundry, the hampers will overflow and eventually take over our house. So now I try my best to keep the laundry on a “loose” schedule.
In our hallway closet I have 3 of my plastic baskets. One for towels, one for whites and the last for clothes. My kids already know where to put what. When a basket gets full I wash it, but make sure that we always have the things we need (like if the whites aren’t full but we need Shabbos shirts, I will wash the whites).
As soon as I remove a full basket from the closet I put an empty one in. Without a basket there is laundry all over the hallway. Trust me. I know from experience.
When do I do the laundry?
When I plan my kids wardrobes at the beginning of each season I make sure that each child has enough weekday clothing to last for at least a week, so if I don’t get to the laundry as soon as the basket is full, it’s usually not a big deal. Everyone may not have their favorite shirt, but they all have a clean shirt.
Since I’m out of the house for most of the day I do most of our laundry at night or on Sunday.
Delay End- It’s Changed How I Do Laundry
Guys, I have to tell you about what happened to me after Tisha B’Av this year.
During the 9 days I didn’t do laundry. Our baskets were overflowing and I needed to do at least 3 loads of laundry by Monday night (camp shirt for DS and all bed linen for the cleaning service that came on Tuesday). I washed the camp shirt on Sunday night right after Tisha B’Av, but couldn’t stay up late to do another load that night.
The next morning at 7am, while I was fishing things out of the dryer, I saw that my washing machine had a ‘delay end’ feature! I always wondered how people made use of this (it’s basically a timer you set to end your wash load after the specified number of hours) and how it was helpful.
So, with little time to get the laundry done it clicked.
I loaded my next load of laundry and set the timer for 10 hours later so it would be done by the time I got home. Why have I never used this feature before?
I got home and my load was washed. I put it in the dryer, loaded the last bit and was basically done for the night. I’ve gotta use this feature more often!
Putting it all away
Once all the laundry is done I load it into an empty basket and bring it into someone’s (anyone’s) room. It’s on that person’s bed where I sort everything. A pile for each person to put away and since we don’t fold much, it goes pretty quickly.
And that my friends is how we do laundry in our house.
What tips can you share on how to manage all the laundry? Do you use the timer on your machine? Am I the only one whose never used it before??
Until next time,
Shaindy
