Laundry Room Organization

Laundry Room Organization

We wash about 15+ loads of laundry every week. So how do I keep us from drowning in a sea of dirty clothes, baskets of clean clothes and folded piles of clothes all over the house?

Here is my method:

I give each of my children, as soon as they are capable, their own laundry basket. I also give them their own colored towels and their own laundry day. They are responsible for their own laundry. They have a hook on the back of their bedroom door where they hang their towel and wash cloth and wash it on their laundry day. There is not enough room in the bathroom for everyone to hang their towels when they are done with them. They keep their laundry basket in their bedrooms until laundry day. My laundry room is small and also serves as my pantry and storage for cleaning supplies, vacuum cleaner, broom and dustpan, bin with shoes in it, etc.. so there really is no room for piles of dirty clothes.

The rules are that they get their laundry completely finished from dirty clothes to clean clothes in the drawers that day. This leaves no mountains of laundry, no baskets of clean or piles of folded clothes sitting around. The children are also responsible for their own bed sheets, which we wash on schedule.

My laundry job is keeping tabs on the children to make sure they follow the rules and get their laundry finished, washing the general bathroom towels, kitchen dish cloths and towels, and keeping up on me and my husband’s laundry. My children (from 12 years on up) are all very capable of doing their laundry without my help, however when they were younger I also spent time on their laundry day teaching them how to run the washing machine, how much soap to use, how to run the dryer, helped them fold their clothes and put them away. I did this (or often had an older well trained child help them) until they were capable of doing it on their own. But, even today, I have to follow through with some of my children to make sure the basket of clean and folded clothes is not sitting in the middle of their bedroom ~smile~.

For the household laundry, I keep a bin (really it is a tall size plastic kitchen trash can) in the laundry room for the kitchen towels and wash cloths. If they are wet, I just hang them over the side of the bin to dry before tossing them in. I also put my cleaning rags and mop covers in this bin too. I have a small basket that sits on my laundry room shelves and it holds my cloth napkins. I have the same type of bin in my bathroom and this holds towels and wash cloths that are used other than my children’s color coded towels and wash cloths. All these items are washed on schedule. To save time I typically wash the bathroom towels with my cloth napkins.

To help me keep track of what needs to be washed and whose laundry day it is I keep a laundry schedule hanging on the laundry room wall next to the washing machine. I list the days of the week and write down whose laundry day it is and what household laundry needs to be done on that day. My schedule looks like this..

LAUNDRY SCHEDULE

MONDAY:
Household Laundry: kitchen towels & cleaning rags
Isaac’s Laundry Day

TUESDAY:
Household Laundry: Bathroom towels & napkins

WEDNESDAY:
Household Laundry: kitchen towels & cleaning rags
Jacob’s Laundry Day

Thursday:
Household Laundry: Bathroom towels & napkins
Sierra’s Laundry Day

Friday:
Mom’s Laundry Day

SATURDAY:
Household Laundry: kitchen towels & cleaning rags
Leanne’s Laundry Day

Happy Laundry Room Organization!!

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