Have you tried (repeatedly) to bring order and discipline to your laundry? Only, to say after a brief attempt, “Really, what was I thinking?” I’m laugh-snorting as I write this. This is how I found nirvana – laundry nirvana.
Our family tried to get it together and clean our clothes on a regular cycle. We tried and tried. It never stuck. Inevitably, we would hit laundry rock bottom. You know laundry rock bottom!
The kids are digging through smelly laundry hampers looking for a uniform, wearing dirty clothes, and doing the sniff test to find a matching pair of socks. Our laundry rock bottom found me checking our kids’ underpants to make sure they weren’t wearing yesterdays.
Ok, that’s not the worst. There was one proud mom moment where I told my son’s 5th-grade teacher that honestly, I did wash his hoodie. He wore that hoodie every day for a year. Sound familiar?
A couple of laundry baskets is all it will take to reach laundry nirvana: that and a simple habit. Buy a laundry basket for each bedroom or family member plus one extra. Keep the extra laundry basket in your laundry room.
And the simple habit – pop in a load each night before dinner. That’s it.
Any ‘got a have clean’ laundry gets dropped into the basket in the laundry room to be included in that’s evening laundry cycle. While the kids were young, my husband or I would pop a load in the washer. Once the kids were old enough, they knew which night was their laundry night.
It’s pretty simple to fold clothes while watching TV or when the kids were working on homework. If I were feeling lazy, I wouldn’t fold at all. No pressure and no laundry expectations at my house.
Voila, you have clean clothes — no more sniffing socks or checking undies.
Life’s too short to spend time sweating the laundry.
PS – Your kids need to know how to do laundry. It’s a necessary life skill, mama. When mine were young, I taught them how to separate color and whites.
If you’re feeling ambitious, Amazon has an inexpensive basket, and it takes no time at all to create helpful color-code basket labels.
Even the youngest member of the household will get the hang of color-sorting his dirty laundry. Someday, a sweet daughter-in-law will compliment you on how well you trained your sons. A mom can dream, right!
xo,
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