Do you ever have laundry mountains in your home? If so, then you are not alone! This giant pile used to be the story of my basement:
{What was supposed to be a relaxing movie room, was most often used as a dumping grounds for clean clothes.}
For a long time, digging through an enormous laundry pile to find one clean outfit was a near-daily occurrence. But for the past year, our laundry has been under control (!!!). Let me repeat that: for the past year, our laundry situation has been under control.
The method I use is so simple that I haven’t written about it yet because it doesn’t feel revolutionary enough to warrant a full article. But, having a ridiculously simple laundry system is exactly why I cannot, in good conscious, keep this a secret for another minute.
Here’s the super easy way to stay caught up on laundry in just 15 minutes a day:
{While you’re reading about our laundry system, please excuse the fact that we’re wearing clothes instead of PJs like I mention in the instructions – I really wanted to share this article with you right away, so my kids were great sports and did the laundry several hours early to let me take some photos.}
1) In the evening, everyone puts on their PJs. The designated person then gathers all of the dirty laundry into one place.
2) The next designated person immediately carries laundry to the laundry room, dumps it in the washing machine, and starts it up.
3) Immediately before bedtime prayers, the clothes are moved over to the dryer and everything that shouldn’t be put in the dryer is hung on the line.
4) The next morning, laundry comes out of the dryer and off the line, then each person folds their own clothes….
5) … And puts their laundry away.
And that’s it! Like I said earlier, super simple. But it really works!
This method takes a total of about 15 minutes a day, which is less time than we used to spend just digging through piles and piles of laundry every morning, without any of the stress!
A few bonus tips:
1) Unless you’re the only person who wears clothes in your house, you should probably not be doing laundry alone!
2) I highly recommend having designated people for certain jobs. Otherwise, everyone tends to think that someone else is doing the job and it may not get done.
3) If you need to leave for work early in the morning, you could change the folding time to whatever works best for your schedule, like right after dinner or immediately before bed.
4) If you just can’t bear the thought of putting all of your laundry in the same load, you could modify the laundry system to do something like darks on Mondays, towels on Tuesdays, etc.
But really, the simplicity of just throwing everything in together each evening is what has made this a huge success in our house. I do wash things like jeans separately right after we buy them so they won’t bleed onto the lighter items, but other than that, it all goes in together, and my husband’s white undershirts are still white 🙂
Again, this system only takes a total of about 15 minutes a day, and getting ready for the day is so much less stressful because we nearly always have plenty of clean clothes in our drawers and closets.
And when we do fall behind on occasion? I use this method to catch back up again!
{With the laundry under control, our basement movie room is nearly always ready for family movie nights!}
I’d love to hear – what’s the laundry situation like in your house? Do you think this method would work for your family or have you found another system that fits your needs better?
