What is your laundry "system"? Why do you prefer it?

[Ginevra]

Another Quill-is-curious post.  :tongue_smilie:  I'm a believer in twice-a-week laundering. Small families who do laundry every day has always been a little baffling to me. If you do it this way (and you don't have ten kids), why do you? And how do you? Do you go through the house and collect all the darks one day, all the brights the next? Do you throw everything in a load at once? 

 

In case the every-day-launderers are wondering how the twice-a-week laundering works, all the dirty clothes come to the main hallway, I sort (sometimes with kids helping), then go through the laundry throughout the day, flipping loads as we go along and folding and returning to baskets the clean clothes as they finish. (Sometimes the kids do some part of this flipping or folding.) 

[Freckles]

We are a family of four. My husband does his own laundry unless he is running behind. I don't make him do it. He wants to "help me out." I have three laundry baskets in the laundry room. Clothes are to be separated when they arrive in the room. Whites, darks, lights. My girls have laundry baskets in their closets. I ask them to bring their clothes in throughout the week. I do a couple of loads about every other day, or several loads on one day. I don't start a load if it can't be dried and put away the same day. I don't iron. I like doing smaller loads more frequently because it is not such a battle to get the clothes put away.

[lynn]

Nothing fits our system.  We are a family of 6.  My goal is to wash, dry, fold, put away 2 loads a day.    I never wash more than I have time for.

[renmew]

It's just me and three kids here, so I voted as a medium-sized family. Since I work full time, I am only home Monday thru Friday between the hours of 6 pm and 6:45 am. I'm busy doing homework, dinner, baths, etc... Saturday is for sports and hanging with friends.  Sunday morning we do church and religious ed classes until noonish, then I spend the entire afternoon/evening cleaning and doing laundry. I do not want to spend my life doing laundry, so I just get it all done in one afternoon. Works for me.

[DawnM]

I taught my boys to do their own laundry.  Each child does his own laundry once a week (or sometimes when he realized he is out!)  They also wash their own sheets.

 

DH does his own as well.  

 

I now only do my own laundry and the towels/jackets/extras. 

[amo_mea_filiis.]

3 people here. We use the washing machine as the dirty clothes hamper. Ds's bedding needs to be washed just about daily. So when I get out of the shower in the morning, the washer is usually ready to run.

 

When ds's bedding doesn't need to be washed, the washer can fill for a couple days (our house is so damp that towels used and hung in the morning will not be dry by the next morning, so we use a new towel for each shower).

 

Then I get dressed, put dishes away, and start the coffee pot. Switch the laundry, have coffee, get some school done with ds, and it's ready to fold and put away.

 

Using the washer as the hamper is the only way I've ever been able to keep up with laundry. This means that I wash everything in soap that ds isn't allergic to, even though I could save money by washing dd's and my stuff with detergents on sale.

[blondeviolin]

So, a family of seven is medium or large? I try to do a load of regular laundry a day and cloth diapers every other day.

[AlmiraGulch]

It's DH and 2 DDs, plus 1/2 DD in my house.  

 

My kids do their own laundry, apparently when they run out.  I don't monitor.  

 

DH and I both do ours together, and we do it when we see it needs to be done.  

 

Between all of us, we do several loads a week.

 

Interesting topic, though, because I just now had a discussion with my DD17 about her laundry habits.  She is in the middle of something downstairs and texted me (I know, I know) to ask if I'd put her laundry in the dryer.  I swear that washer was packed so full I don't even know how any of it could have gotten clean!  It was half clothes and half towels.  It was so heavy my dryer wouldn't even have handled all of it in one load.

 

We had to have a discussion about the proper way to do laundry, and also that you really need to use towels more than once before you wash them.  She acted as if she'd never heard any of that information before.   :glare:

 

[Ottakee]

I have a family of 5--most of the time, on the weekends we can be up to 8 of us with the extras that hang out here and/or foster kids.

 

My general guideline is that I do laundry twice a week---Monday and Thursday. Why you ask.....well those were the days my grandma and my mom did laundry so I do too :-)

 

I generally have 3 loads each time, a darks, a lights, and a whites/towels load. Occ. we have an extra load but 3 usually does it.

 

We have had a few foster kids that want to do their own laundry and that is fine with me. WHile all 3 of my kids can do their own laundry, I prefer to do it all together as that was I have full loads of darks, lights, and whites vs. the kids either throwing everything from barn clothes to bras in the same load or doing a lot of little loads.

[Guest]

Gee, Quill, I'm not that organized. 3-person family here. When the laundry piles up (or someone is out of underwear), I go on a laundry jag. I've tried having a day for darks, a day for light colors, a day for whites, a day for towels, and a day for sheets. Then I run out of things to wash or I don't have enough to make a load. I wind up not doing laundry for a couple days to let things pile up and, well, sometimes I forget. Enter: LAUNDRY CRISIS! Then I feverishly do loads of laundry. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. 

 

Maybe I need a system.

Dang. I was so close to putting a choice that read just like this! 

[Guest]

This is fascinating! 

 

As far as what translates to number of people/family size, I'm not that picky. Just use what you describe your family as. 

[AngelaNYC]

I voted Medium Family, Wash Daily.  Actually I do one load every weekday, nothing on Saturday or Sunday.  I keep it fairly simple:  Monday and Tuesday are colors,  Wednesday is whites, Thursday is sheets and whatever else needs it (shower curtain, blankets, small pillows), and Friday is towels, bath mats, and cleaning rags.  

[bluemongoose]

I voted large 2x because from where I am from, 4 kids is a large family.

 

I usually sort clothes on Friday night or Sat morning. I then do laundry when possible until it is done, sometimes not until Tuesday. I sort for the 3 boys, DH and I. DD does her laundry separately because she needs special soap. We do her laundry together (she cannot reach the soap, and I double check the settings).

[MeghanL]

I have 5 in my family. I have 4 laundry baskets in the hallway. One for lights, one for darks, one for towels and one for linens. My husband & the kids are all trained to put all dirty laundry in one of the baskets (even the 3-year-old). Sometimes, they'll put a dark item in the light basket or vice versa, but the clothes are mostly sorted before they ever reach me. 

Then, I do one load of laundry a day. Since the laundry baskets are in the hallway, I just grab one on my way downstairs and put it in the washer. I have a rotation of lights, darks, towels, linens, lights, darks (with no laundry on Sunday) and then start Monday with towels. 

I fold laundry the same day and I am allowed to watch tv guilt free while I am folding laundry or waiting for it to dry (after the kids go to bed). I then put all the freshly folded laundry back in the basket with my husband clothes on the bottom (clothes already separated by drawer), then mine, my oldest, my middle and my youngest. The next morning I put it all away. It takes 5 minutes since it's already sorted by child.

 

[MomtoCandJ]

We throw our clothes directly into the washer so when it's full I turn it on :)

[Heather in OK]

Six of us here.  No specific "laundry day" in our house.  

 

The kids wash their own clothes when they need them washed.  They are also responsible for washing their own bed linens.  This was from absolutely no urging from me or dh.  They all just started doing their own stuff.  It's awesome.  lol  

One of the daily jobs (aka chores) is laundry.  The kid who has that for the week is responsible for seeing that any towels get washed/dried/put away, making sure things are being moved from washer to dryer, etc.  

I take care of clothes for dh and myself. 
 

[Jan in SC]

We are a family of five, and I think we might produce the most dirty clothes ever.

 

I wash at least a load a day, but usually two or three loads in a day. Some of the loads only have one or two shirts each, though. Baseball uniforms are a pain, and we have a lot of game and practice clothes. If someone has a show, I usually have to wash theatre undergarments every night or two.

[SailorMom]

Family of 4, we do laundry, at least one load, every day.  I like it because I never have "Mount Laundry" to deal with.

[PeacefulChaos]

I voted small family: some other system

:lol:

Here it is... .wait for it....

 

when the kids say they have no socks, I do their laundry.

When DH has no socks, I do our laundry.

 

That pretty much covers it.  :D

 

 

Oh, and just because it gets done doesn't mean it gets folded or put away.  The laundry in the dryer generally stays there until I have another load of laundry to do... then I'll get around to folding it, since I'll need the dryer for the upcoming load. 

SO not as much of a perfectionist as people think I am!!  :D

[Guest inoubliable]

Five people here. We do one load of clothes on Wednesdays. We do three loads on Saturdays - one load of clothes, one load of towels, and one load of sheets. We alternate which sheets get done on Saturdays. Our queen size sheets get done one week, and the boys' twin size sheets get done the next week, and so on. Once a month on a Saturday I do an extra two loads - duvet covers. 
We have one laundry basket - it sits next to the dryer. The dryer and the laundry basket are actually in my bedroom. The washer is in our kitchen. 
DS13 is in charge of laundry. His brothers help as needed. 

[KungFuPanda]

We're a family of four and manage to generate about 1 1/2 to two loads a day. Usually it's a dark or light load, plus something else like towels or sheets. If anyone exercises, it's like having an extra person in the house because they wear two outfits that day and often an extra shower is involved. It's not hard for a small family to generate laundry. Also, my kids are teens. When they were little their clothes took up less space in the washer.

 

If I get behind, I throw sorting out the window and do the loads per person. It's just easier to get it put away like that.

 

Because I'm not consistent in my method, I didn't vote.

[Pawz4me]

I voted medium family (there are four of us) and "other."

 

I have a system for sheets and towels.  One bed gets its sheets washed on Monday, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday.  Towels are washed on Tuesdays and Fridays.

 

Everything else gets done as we accumulate enough for a load of that color (darks, whites and coloreds) or as needed (sports uniforms, blankets, pillows, rugs, etc.).

 

I like doing it this way because I rarely have to do more than three loads on any one day, and it keeps mountains of dirty stuff from piling up.

[Erica in OR]

Seven people here, including twins in cloth diapers. We're an "other."

 

Five days of the week have laundry assigned to someone/something:

9 y.o. does his laundry Tues

DH and I do our laundry Wed

I do bath towels, kitchen towels/rags Thurs

two older girls do their laundry Fri

sheets on Sat (everyone does their sheets every other Sat)

 

Fit in cloth diapers and toddler clothes whenever they need it.

 

I like it because I don't feel like we're in an endless laundry loop every single day. People are responsible for their own things. If they don't hit their laundry day, they wait until their day rolls around again, me included. Forces us to keep it at a manageable level.

 

Erica in OR

 

[AHASRADA]

We're a family of 5. I said "other system" because I don't do laundry on a set schedule.

 

I have 3 baskets in the master bedroom (next to the family bathroom). One each for darks, mediums and whites. Everyone puts their dirty clothes in the appropriate basket, and I take a look at how full they are when I get up in the AM. I'll do a load or 2 as necessary. It works out to 1-2 loads over 2 days, then a day or 2 off.

 

I prefer to fold the same day, but sometimes if the 2nd load isn't dry until late, it waits until the AM. I put each person's clothes in their room, and they are responsible for putting them away in drawers.

 

I also love folding, since it gives me a reason to watch TV (basically the only time I do!).

[AK_Mom4]

Just four of us at home now.  I do laundry on Saturdays, with one extra load of DH's work clothes on Wednesday. 

[sunnyday]

With four of us, I try to do 2-3 loads every 2-3 days. My husband goes through about 3 changes of clothing a day so he can create a load of laundry in 2-3 days all on his own. Half his things need air drying, and he prefers dryer sheets on his dried laundry, and he routinely creates messes that need warm water to get them totally clean, so I try to save and separate his things. I have very few clothes so I need to do my laundry every 3rd day at a minimum, and the kids' things usually round out that load, which I can do on cold. I also try to do a sheets and/or towels and/or rags load 1-2 times per week. I don't let myself start a load without an empty laundry basket to put it in, and we only have 3 baskets, so this keeps me folding and putting away.

 

In practice though, my husband is hyper-organized so he'll do a load as soon as he sees one build up, to be helpful, and he doesn't sort. Ever. And he happily carries things to the laundry room without a basket, or dumps previous loads into Mount Laundry without folding, so I get way behind if he does even one load. I don't complain though. :p

[songsparrow]

We are a family of 4.  When I am "on top" of the laundry, my system looks like this:

 

Every morning when I come downstairs, I bring the dirty laundry from the hamper to the laundry room, and I sort it in the laundry room.  I typically wash 2 clothing loads a day - one will always be darks and includes hubby's dirty gym clothes from the previous evening, and then whatever other load is full.  I also wash 1 other load per day - bathroom towels, sheets from one or more beds, dog bedding, kitchen dishcloths & towels, rags, etc.  

 

My goal is to make sure that all clean laundry is folded and carried upstairs and put away before bed.

[MrsMommy]

I don't know if we really count as a large family...there are seven of us. I do laundry pretty much every day. Sometimes, I can manage to do just one load on the weekend, depending on what we've been up to. Sometimes, I really miss the days when I could just do laundry every other day...

[Χά�ων]

2 people in the house here. I use the washing machine as a hamper, when it is full I run it. I keep special clothes separate and never buy clothing that bleeds so there is not issue with mixing whites and colors. I have an energy efficient washing machine that calculates the size of the load and adjusts accordingly. I voted daily because with the old machine last winter it was daily. DS has to wear special clothing and we both wear lots of layers so a days worth of clothing would fill the machine.

[carriede]

Family of 4, and I do 3-4 loads a week. Mondays and Thursdays I do clothes and Tuesdays I alternate sheets and towels. I like having set days because I know that it'll get done that day, and I don't have to worry about it the rest of the week.

 

We have a small house with a laundry closet and only 2 laundry baskets. All that helps me keep on top of the laundry because I literally have no where to put mounds of dirty clothes.

[shanvan]

Another Quill-is-curious post.  :tongue_smilie:  I'm a believer in twice-a-week laundering. Small families who do laundry every day has always been a little baffling to me. If you do it this way (and you don't have ten kids), why do you? And how do you? Do you go through the house and collect all the darks one day, all the brights the next? Do you throw everything in a load at once? 

 

In case the every-day-launderers are wondering how the twice-a-week laundering works, all the dirty clothes come to the main hallway, I sort (sometimes with kids helping), then go through the laundry throughout the day, flipping loads as we go along and folding and returning to baskets the clean clothes as they finish. (Sometimes the kids do some part of this flipping or folding.) 

I do things exactly the way you do except, for the most part it is only once a week and done in a day.  I cannot stand to have laundry spread through the week.  Sometimes I find a few extras to throw in a day or so later, but mostly I wash on Mondays and it's over for the week.  Now, if Dh offers to 'help' then it usually takes up 2 days b/c he cannot seem to grasp the importance of stopping anything you are doing to go and switch over the wash, and it will end up stalled for several hours (which drives me batty, btw, along with the fact that he gives half my stuff to the kids and I spend the week wondering what happened to this shirt or that pair of socks.  :glare: )

 

I remember a thread like this before.  I think I had, sort of a, ah... reaction while reading it.  like I was afraid someone was going to come here and make me do wash everyday.   :willy_nilly: Crazy, I know.  I tried the everyday wash idea once and I felt like a failure b/c it was just never done and over.  I'm a lost cause.  I don't think I can ever change.  

 

After watching extreme cheapskates one night I have been contemplating starting wash at around midnight to save on electricity, but so far I haven't followed through on that.  I don't think Dh likes the idea of the dryer running at night while we are sleeping. 

[Jackie]

Family of 3 and I usually do one load per day. I even have it on more or less a schedule because I hate when it builds up. We do have a fairly small capacity washer/dryer, so whenever they need replaced we may get larger capacity and cut the number of loads.

 

Monday - towels from parents' bathroom

Tuesday - DD's bedding

Wednesday - DD's towels

Thursday - parents' towels again

Friday - parents' bedding

Saturday and Sunday - clothes

[redsquirrel]

Family of four. We generally do laundry once a week.  I don't really know though. DH is in charge of it and I don't really think about it. He does it on the weekends and the boys fold and put it away. I know sheets and stuff get washed as well, but I don't know if there is a schedule. There probably is.

[craftyerin]

Medium (5) and Daily

 

I start a load the minute my feet hit the floor in the morning.  I have a 3-bin sorter hamper in the laundry room.  One bin for grown-ups, one for kids, one for "gross, needs to be washed on hot".  I put whatever bin is the most full in the washer and run it, no additional sorting (that means I do NOT sort lights/darks for clothing).  I move that load into the dryer at some point during the day.  When I put in the day's load, I pull the day before's load out of the dryer and it gets folded and put away at some point before bed.   The only day that is different is the day when the housekeeper is coming.  On that day, I don't do a bin from the hamper, but instead do all sheets and towels, so that towel hooks and beds are bare and ready for re-filling when she cleans.  That usually takes 2 loads, so I have a little more shuffling from machine to machine during the day. 

 

As long as I'm consistent and actually do what I'm "supposed to",  laundry stays caught up. If I slack on folding/putting away and let it pile up, DH gets to fold during his TV time at night. :lol:

[melbotoast]

Family of 4, daily

M-colors

T-sheets

W-towels

Th-colors

F-whites

[Luanne]

We are a family of two.  We wouldn't have enough to wash to do laundry every day.  Twice a week is about right to do one to two loads depending on if it is the one time a week we do bed stuff and towels.

[kewb]

Am I supposed to have a system?  I suppose my system is as follows:

 

Me: Hmm, the hamper is full.  I guess I should do some laundry.

 

Since I hang most of my laundry to dry and have limited hanging space I do clothes over 2 days.

Sheets and towels once a week.

[*Lulu*]

Medium family (5)- wash two loads daily. (Except Saturday)

 

Reasons- I hate to fold and cannot handle a backlog & my drying rack only holds so much

 

Everyday (except Saturday) I grab one of the dirty clothes baskets, (we have 3 total)

 

Monday- dish towels and cloth napkins

Tuesday- bedding (one persons)

Wednesday- bath towels

Thursday- napkins

Friday- bedding (one persons)

Saturday- cleaning rags/old towels

Sunday- bath towels

[NoseInABook]

Family of 7 and I wash two times a week. Unless a kid wets the bed, then I wash that immediately. I really should do it more because it's always a giant laundry mountain that takes hours to fold and put away. I just hate laundry.

[jolley]

We are a family of 6. I do laundry every other day. Usually 3 loads at a time, just depends.

[Lara in Colo]

We are a family of six and I have a central laundry hamper, segregated by color and type of load. (it is actually a dresser drawer cabinet with 5 drawers)

Everyone uses the same hamper.  A full drawer is a load.  Sometimes that means one load a day, sometimes that means two or more.  Will do lots of laundry on sunny days so I can save money using my line.

[momto10blessings]

Family of 11.

 

I wash Monday-Friday

 

Everyone has their own dirty clothes baskets and everyone's clothes are washed once a week separate from others. I don't buy anything in white except socks and a few dress shirts.

I do 2-3 loads of towels a week and wash a load of sheets, so that equals about 15 loads a week. Yikes.

My older kids do their own laundry on Wednesdays so I usually don't step foot into the laundry room on Wednesdays.

[sbgrace]

We're just a family of 4, but wash a load daily. We've always got a full load and I prefer a load a day vs. laundry day (s) with multiple loads. We do often do a 2nd load (bedding or similar) on Saturdays. I avoid a huge pile of waiting laundry (outside of vacation, washer going out, etc.) We have some things that are individually grouped loads: delicate/low temp items; washcloths for drying hands, cloth napkins, etc.; underwear; bedding. With the exception of bedding, which comes off the bed to wash, those things are in their own baskets. I wash all the rest together.

 

One thing I love about this house is the size of the laundry room. I didn't have a laundry room of any sort in my old home. This one has large closets. Most of our clean clothes go straight into those laundry closets. One is hubby and I and the other is the boys. Dress clothes (that low temp special load) go upstairs. We also have a full bath down there which is the one we primarily use for showers, so the vast majority of our dirty laundry is already downstairs too. I love it.

[Ellie]

When dds were at home, I did laundry once a week, on Friday (which was Official Cleaning Day). All the laundry, washed, dried, put away. The end. No thinking about laundry until the following Friday--no laundry on weekends, everyone has clean undies for church, just getting up and moving into the week on Monday. :-)

 

By the time dds were 10ish and 13ish, they were doing their own laundry, whenever it worked for them. I still do the majority of my laundry on Fridays, although sometimes I'll wash Mr. Ellie's and my clothes on another day of the week, just to be crazy, lol.

[Wilma]

I launder by room - so the huz and I get a load, Kids1&3 get a load and Kids2&4 get a load. I do not sort, whatever is in that room's dirty clothes basket goes into the washer. So all that is on an as-needed basis. If the basket is full, I wash. Some people aren't great about getting their stuff into their dirty baskets, and their laundry just doesn't get done until they get around to it. But then the clean/dry stuff goes upstairs by room, just like it went down. The kids put their own stuff away, with help for the littler girls. And I eventually put away the grow up stuff. Probably.

[Chris in VA]

4 home now. Everyone does their own laundry. Usually I do a load of towels when the bin is full--dh and I use a fresh towel every day, so I wash towels about 2x a week. Ds and dd do laundry when their bins are full--usually 2 loads or so a week.

 

My boys started doing their own clothes at 8 and 10 years of age. Dd started when she was about 10 also. 

 

I caught them up on occasion when they were small.

 

I go thru bins and do random loads of towels from time to time. I do a kitchen load when the basket at the bottom of the basement stairs is full. (I throw down dishcloths and drying cloths and random socks people leave around.)

 

Sheets get done whenever they get changed. 

[Word Nerd]

Family of four. I wash one or two (full) loads daily or every other day. Why? Because that's how much laundry we have and I don't like doing more than a couple of loads a day or see the point of letting it accumulate. Mainly I just try to avoid letting the laundry take over.

[Chelli]

We throw our clothes directly into the washer so when it's full I turn it on :)

 

I started doing this a few months ago and LOVE it! I got rid of laundry baskets out of every bedroom so no more unsightly mountains of dirty clothes or, in the kids' case, no more spilled all over the room.

 

The only things I wash separately are towels/sheets and whites.

[lovinmomma]

Gee, Quill, I'm not that organized. 3-person family here. When the laundry piles up (or someone is out of underwear), I go on a laundry jag. I've tried having a day for darks, a day for light colors, a day for whites, a day for towels, and a day for sheets. Then I run out of things to wash or I don't have enough to make a load. I wind up not doing laundry for a couple days to let things pile up and, well, sometimes I forget. Enter: LAUNDRY CRISIS! Then I feverishly do loads of laundry. Lather, Rinse, Repeat. 

 

Maybe I need a system.

 

This is exactly how I handle things. lol

[Sara in AZ]

Family of six:

 

Monday: I wash for DH and I, usually two loads of coloreds and one load of whites.

 

Tuesday: Older DD's and DS wash their own clothes.

 

Wednesday: towels.

 

Randomly: bedding, younger DD's hamper when she runs out of clothes.