How to Simplify Your Laundry Routine

• We have two little boys and seem to need to do laundry ever other day or so, plus diapers/diaper wipe cloths (we hang dry, too, so I find it takes 1.5 days to properly dry everything, and this works well). I’ve always just chucked everything into a single rubbermaid tote that I use as the laundry basket (those actual “laundry baskets always seem so poorly made – plus the rubbermaid can double as storage or for moving, which we seem to do a lot of). Definitely no separating colours from lights, either – we only use cold water for our clothes and I’ve never had a problem with colours running.

• I came to wear things more often as well and don’t sort by colour (I do a seperate “hot water load” though, in which I wash sheets and “messy” cloth and wipes from the kitchen. I use underwear and towels as fillers, they can go in both the hot water or the ordinary load)
  Usually I do about one ordinary load a week and one or two hot water loads a month.

  So, no, no laundry overwhelm here, but then we don’t have children.

• I’ve been doing Courtney Carver’s Project 333 for about a month now. (It’s a challenge to wear just 33 items for 3 months.) One benefit I’ve noticed is that by limiting myself to 33 items, I have been re-wearing my clothes more often, resulting in less laundry. With only two t-shirts in the rotation, I don’t want them both in the hamper at the same time! =). Oftentimes we wash things after just one use and they could get a few more go-rounds, especially things like pajamas and pants.

• I love doing laundry. We are a family of 4 (5 and 2 year old) in London and we have a washer/dryer combo. We have one small laundry basket in my bedroom. I do one load a day and that keeps everything caught up. I do separate whites and darks, because of my son’s school uniform. It’s a white shirt and it gets a funny colour when washed with too many other colours. All of his uniform items are air dried as well as jeans. Doing a load a day leaves plenty of room to wash everyone’s sheets and towels during the week as well. I don’t fold much of the laundry either. It comes straight out of the dryer and sorted into piles depending on who’s room it goes in. All shirts get hung up, socks and underwear get put in the drawers (I do match the socks) and trousers and pyjamas get placed in their drawers. Once a week I iron anything that needs it.

• I have 4 grown kids and 1 teenager. I did laundry for 7 people for years. I don’t mind laundry. I have 3 collection hampers in the house. 1 is near the only bathroom and our bedroom. My 21 year old son has a hamper in his room and there is a hamper right next to the washing machine. When I had a baby in cloth diapers, I did clothes one day and diapers the next day alternating. I still do lots of laundry. I sort for colour because my daughter has pink dance tights that get dingy if they go in with the darks all the time and my son has white uniform shirts for job. I do use my dryer but I also have 2 large drying racks that we use too for a lot of the clothes. One trick for us is as adults is that we don’t change all of our clothes everyday. Items like jeans or shirts that were over another shirt don’t need washing all the often.

• Growing up in a family of five kids we all had to put our laundry in the laundry room in baskets by colour etc. BUT… here is the genius part. We each had a basket with our name on it that the clean laundry went into. We were responsible for moving it back to our rooms or forced to go there in the morning to get dressed.

• I love doing the laundry. Let me come to your house and do your laundry 🙂 I want to quit my job and work in a hospital or some other place doing the laundry.

  We have two laundry baskets that sit one on top of the washer and the other on top of the dryer. Each member of the family sorts their own lights and darks. No one’s allowed to leave clothes, towels, whatever on the floor. I have them trained. It’s awesome.

• This topic comes at an interesting time for me. I have tried to win the laundry battle. I spent the entire last weekend DETERMINED I would win…I was two dryer loads and one wash away from winning, I had to stop as it was 10 at night and people were sleeping…two days went by…the battle was on again. Sadly even if I win the battle, the war will still wage. Here are my three tips to making laundry collection easier.
  1. Why collect if you have to? If you wore it once, it doesn’t mean it dirty…’nuff said
  2. Get the kids involved, my daughter likes to take her stuff and help me…hey she maybe slow, but whatever, one less load for me to carry
  3. Finally, my dream solution: a chute that goes right from the bathroom and bedrooms directly into three bins beside the washing machine downstairs-lights, darks and bleach me please. Seriously why aren’t home builders thinking of this…they do it for garbage?

• We currently have our laundry baskets in the bathroom, which is the closest room to our outdoor laundry. It is nice and easy to put things in the machine and return the basket straight away. Keeping a short distance for repetitive tasks is always best, wherever possible.

  Thanks for sharing

• I don’t bother to separate light and darks either so I just wash everything each day. It’s nice to hear I’m not the only one. Our laundry hamper and diaper pail are in the bathroom and we just toss the clothes in it when getting into the shower or the tub. I wash diapers in the morning and clothes at night after the kids get into pajamas. Kitchen laundry is under the kitchen sink and after lunch I do any extra loads I might have like bedding or towels.

• I have one main laundry collection site for the four of us. We used to all share one closet and that’s when I established the one laundry basket. Even though we moved the girls out of the closet, they are used to bringing their dirty clothes to the laundry basket. I grew up doing something similar, so it makes sense to me.

  I do have a laundry basket that sits on top of our washing machine. We throw our used kitchen towels and napkins in it and an occasional piece of clothing. With limited collection sites, it helps me stay on top of doing the laundry because it’s easy to see when the basket is full.

• My husband and I live in a one bedroom high rise building so a clothes line is not an option.
  I have one laundry basket with 2 bags. One is for clothes, the other is for towels, sheets, kitchen cloths etc. I have a laundry sink so the clothes get washed within a day or two of being worn. I hang clothing on hangers over the tub until it stops dripping then on a laundry rack in our bedroom. We have a fan in the bedroom to ensure air circulation. Most things are dry in two hours. The trick is to always do a little bit of laundry every day or two. It does not become a big job or a big mess. We have 2 sets of sheets for our bed and one set for the sofa bed for the rare occasion when we have guests. Sheets, kitchen cloths and towels I do in the building laundry machine once every two weeks. To wash and dry one large load in hot water every two weeks costs $3.50. That makes it $91.00 per year. I really can’t justify installing ensuite laundry at that price. If something goes wrong with the washers or dryers it is not my expense.

• ohh Ladies!!! i have nightmares about laundry day. We are six – four children and two adults- and i live in a fourth floor apt complex. No laundry room in the premises. So every Friday we have to carry about four full bags of clothes down to the car and drive to a Laundromat place. And saty there for two- three hours. Sometimes waiting to get an empty cart, or an empty machine. Now, I have 3 baskets in the kids room. One if for all underwear, socks, regardless of color. I realized after much sorting through the years that it works for me to just wash them all togther. I use hot water for those. Then 2 other hampers, one for whites and antoehr for darks. Towels I wash where ever they fit with any of those loads. the only things I see convinients about using the laundromat place is that in three hours everything is done, and even folded by the time we leave. But its a pain, because we have to wait there when we could be doing someting else. I think though that I’m goin to start mixing all darks and whites. Now the problem is that I also separate only for drying time, fabrics that dry up quickly and if left longer might shrink. And sometimes, when I have been sick, I cough up double the amount I spend in laundery and drop the bags. I pick them up and everything is folded for me. But thats not something I can always do. pfft just thinking about it, made me tired, is it Friday yet???

• I am a full-time (outside the home) working mom of a 3 year old, we cloth diapered, and we (my husband and I) work out 4 days a week. Needless to say we always have tons of laundry. However, I am always caught up! My secret is, “1 load a day keeps mom’s sanity at bay” – lol. Now my son is out of diapers, but I will include them in my description. I have 5 separate containers (1 3-sorter hamper, and smaller single hamper, and a medium basket on the shelf above where the other 4 hampers are) in my master closet. 1 for darks, 1 for lights, 1 for towels, the single smaller one for workout clothes (i.e. synthetic stretchy material), and the basket is delicates (i.e. socks and underwear). I have 1 hamper in my son’s room (all his clothes go lumped together in that one), then I had the diaper pail. That removes the step of sorting laundry and all the containers are see-through so I can see when they are full. As you can see, that is 7 containers, for 7 separate loads. Each morning, first thing, a load goes in, the washer, whatever is in the washer goes hung (or a dryer for towels and diaper inserts, underwear, etc) we hang dry pretty much everything for the ease of being able to take to the closets immediately after they are dry. So, Sunday – diapers, Monday – delicates, Tuesday – darks, Wednesday – workout clothes, Thursday – lights, Friday – towels, Saturday – son’s clothes. Now that we don’t have diapers in the mix, I just keep the washer free for when the housecleaners come once a week and they put sheets and don’t have to worry about putting stuff in the dryer that I would rather have hung or vice versa. The wet clothes are usually fine sitting in the washer until the next day, I have never had a problem with that.

• I stopped sorting by colors a long time ago. Everything goes in together, and we have never had any color bleed. I wash everything in cold water (except diapers) and line dry everything, and our clothes come out of it all just fine. With four of us and cloth diapers, I usually end up doing one load of laundry per day. We have one hamper in our bedroom and one in the laundry room. I just gather up a full load from whichever one of those is full, or I wash a load of diapers, once a day. Now if I could just figure out a way to make cleaning the bathrooms seem that easy…

• I have five grown children, two living at home, and laundry is still a challenge. I DO sort by colors and wash temperature, mainly because DD and I have delicate sweaters, etc., that must be washed in cold, while DS has fast food and baseball uniforms, and DH has a formal office wardrobe. After 34 years of marriage and 31 years of children, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is NO easy way to do laundry!

  Two hints: 1. get each person a lingerie bag to put socks in. The bag can be thrown in the washer and dryer, and the socks stay sorted.
  2. purchase more that a week’s worth of sock, underwear, etc., so if laundry doesn’t get done for some emergency reason, everyone can still survive.

• Oh my, you Americans do a lot of laundry!!! At least once everyday???? This is tons of water being wasted!!!! I think my next step would be trying to do it less times, and ALWAYS with the machine being full. I have a family of 4, we hang everything to dry, and we do not have tons of clothes either. We do clothes laundry twice a week; linens once a month; towels etc once every 2 weeks. Come on, let’s save some water. Lol.

• Just my son and I here at home. All our clothes go unseparated straight into the washer. When it’s full, I wash.
  As a pared down household, bedlinen is washed, dried, and put back on the beds same day. Towels the same.

  I used to want a laundry room like Americans have (we’re in UK), but actually, that’s just another room to keep clean.

• My answer to collecting laundry is giving it as a chore to one of our kids. Everyday they go around to all the hampers and take the laundry to the laundry room. Our 13 year old is now in charge of starting a load everyday and then sorting it when it comes out of the dryer. We have four large bins that all the clean laundry gets separated into. Each bin belongs to a family member and they are responsible for putting their own clothes away. Best way to stay on top the laundry is to teach your kids how to do it!

• Gosh… I can’t imagine having to do a load of laundry every day! I think I’d go nuts! I’ve been feeling put upon lately because I have a sick kitty with a urinary problem, so there’s been lots of extra towels, kitty beds and blankets to wash – but even with all that, I haven’t had to do more than one load per week. Of course, I only do laundry for me and the cats. But in “normal” times I don’t do more than one load per month – I do have an extra huge capacity washer though.

  I guess the best advice I have to offer is to reevaluate your definitions of clean and dirty. I work from home, so I tend to wear my clothes numerous times before washing. I generally have a change of “around the house” clothes that get worn for up to a week before washing them – but I change into something more presentable if I have to go out. When I get home I change back into my around the house clothes and hang the “nicer” stuff back in the closet.

  I don’t wash anything until it either smells bad, or has visible dirt on it – or if it’s ridiculously stretched out of shape. One thing that really helped was to designate one drawer as “transitional” where I can put stuff that’s not clean per se, but not dirty enough to need washing yet. That finally did away with the piles of laundry on the floor, and led to less washing of stuff that just got tossed on the floor because I was too lazy to figure out if it was clean or dirty.

  • We do something similar. I couldn’t wash every day since the 3 of us don’t have enough items needing it. (Different if you have babies/toddlers or kids that attract dirt. Mine is 8 and pretty clean luckily) We re-wear most things for a few days. Except underwear of course. I think clothes last longer if they are not washed as much. Especially things like Jeans and jackets.

• I haven’t sorted lights and darks for years, there is no reason to. I keep a laundry basket in our room and each of my kids rooms. Every morning I collect all the laundry (have my 4 year old bring hers) and start a load. When my kids are old enough they will put away their own clothes, my 4 year old does some of that now, she just can’t reach to hang, and when they are older yet they will do their own laundry.

• A load a day keeps the chaos away – that’s what the Flylady says. Since we maintain a capsule wardrobe, we do a load of laundry every day and it really helps. We hang everything up to dry except towels and sheets. I generally think about what load of laundry I’m going to do each morning right before going to bed so that I know whether to get the bin from my boys’ room or whether to pull from our bin. I always wash sheets on Mondays and on the weekend I generally do a load of towels. It’s what works for us. Love your blog! I’ve done several posts on minimalism and have linked back to your blog. Would love for you to check it out sometime. Blessings! LGC

• We have one hamper, when it gets full the laundry gets washed. We’ve had many laundry situations over the past few years, which happens when living in only rentals. We were hand washing some items and hanging them to dry and then once a week doing 2 loads at the laundromat down the road. Then we ordered a 1.46 cu ft portable washing machine to attach to use in the kitchen. I love our little machine. Our loads are much smaller than they used to be. I can do a load of the clothes that the 5 of us wear that day, put it on the drying rack and when we wake up it’s dry. The machine also will wash our king sized sheets. For all of our new to us clothing purchases or clothes that I am make for us, we are looking for lighter weight fabrics that will dry faster.

• We had two Elfa brand racks that hold wire baskets. One basket for each load; one rack of baskets for each bedroom. Clothes needing washing were placed into the proper basket immediately. It was very easy to see what needed washing when. The basket then went to the laundry room in the basement and didn’t come back up until the clothes now in it were clean. Sheets and towels got washed and immediately reused. No storing them. We did have extras when our daughter was young, though, and we might need to change her bed at a time we didn’t want to do laundry. After my accident, when we moved into a single story house, we bought casters for the rack–wheel the whole thing to the laundry room. 🙂

• “Next up: we get rid of the baskets entirely and just put laundry directly into the washing machine.”

  This is brilliant! I think this might actually work if you have just a few people in the house. I wrote about my simple laundry system for our family of 6 a couple weeks ago. http://www.earlybirdmom.com/blog/2013/04/laundry-system/

• I have a hamper in each of the kids’ rooms and it was so freeing when (being quite behind on laundry at the time), I just dumped a whole basket in the washer and washed one kids’ laundry all at once. Then I could just take the whole basket of clean laundry to their room and fold it and put it away all in the same place. Now I do just that regularly. So much better than sorting it all. We have kids; whites are never white for long, so why fight it? I don’t even buy whites for myself, since I am prone to spills and I have more important things to do than treat stains. We have a 3 hamper sorter in the master bedroom with removable bags that I can take to the laundry and dump it in when it is full. I collect towels from bedrooms and bathrooms when they need washing because we don’t have extras.

  • Brilliant ideas! Thanks so much for sharing!

• I have found that the jeans bleed, so i wash jeans separately from everything else. The kids have sorting hampers, so they sort theirs before they put them in the hampers, and they bring the hampers to the laundry room on laundry day. I try to hang lots of stuff, I have the room and it’s easier.
  But all in all, it’s still way too much work. I wish we didn’t wear so many clothes!!

• I have three piles of laundry, whites, darks and coloures.
  I am rather peculiar about keeping whites white; even use some hydrogen peroxide when washing them. :o)

• Before having our kid, we lived in a rental that had a washing machine/ dryer unit in the bathroom. Oh, that was the best system ever – just throw dirty clothes in the machine and wash when it gets full. So easy! (And we had a bidet in that apartment, so doing family cloth was easy-peasy, which was awesome!)

  Now (many moves later and with a almost-seven year old), our washer dryer is in the basement and our bedrooms are on the second floor. We have two baskets (so I can take a load down and leave the basket with it). Most laundry gets done on weekends (by my husband, actually, but we all help out). It does pile up and I hate that. It’s way better when I get it done every other day, but I don’t have a good system for that yet. (I have “spoon issues.”)

  Putting clothes directly in the machines really would be the best system for us, if I can figure out how to make it work. I have often wished for a laundry shoot.

  I also wish I could hang clothes up to dry, but I can’t. I don’t have the energy (and it would not work with my allergies anyway).

  What does work for us:

  We don’t sort at all. (Except that towels and bedding usually get done by themselves.) We wash everything on cold except towels/bedding which we wash on warm. My husband does a lot of laundry. I personally prefer when it’s a closer to even split, because I hate feeling like he has to do it all, but sometimes he does.

• I think I might have the simplest system possible for a family (of 4) living on a different floor than their washing machine.
  I have one big basket in the bathroom. Upon undressing before bath clothes are checked for cleanliness and either thrown in the basket or taken to apropriate rooms/wardrobes. When the basket starts to overflow it’s time to do some washing (more-or-less every second day, our washing machine takes 6kg of laundry). I throw everything on the bathroom floor, sort, take what seems to be prevailing down and pack all the rest back into the basket. It’s great for all those clothes that can fit in both withes and colors categories. Sorting a large pile of laundry is also surprisingly fun for small kids. R is only 17mo old and already capable of sorting if I stand by and give her some instructions. Accepting slow-paced help from children is a great way to have many chores done with little effort and stress.
  My mother used to make me and my sister sort before throwing clothes into her 2 baskets, but I think that is completely unnecessary and actually adds more work. And removes all the fun of throwing laundry on the floor and sorting it 😉

  • “Accepting slow-paced help from children is a great way to have many chores done with little effort and stress.”

    Beautiful.

• My sons did their own laundry from 3rd grade thanks to my neighbor teling me that it was okay. haha. And we have two baskets in our closet. One whites and one darks. I wash whichever we need. WE also have a trash can in the garage for rag/towels and misc stinkies. This works great. I also stopped buying red clothing and my kids wash all their clothes in one load!

  ps-we also hang almost everything aside from towels and undies 🙂

• @laura:
  i grew up on a farm with five siblings. so we not only had regular/play/school clothes, we had work clothes. having each child do his/her own laundry was simply not feasible, as there was too much laundry to do!

  my mom MADE us separate the laundry into three bins–white/dark/towels. and then she taught us how to do loads–her system was complicated (lots of soaking and hanging, etc etc) but we did learn.

  so, to answer your question of how to do laundry for a big family?
  1. communal laundry bins, already sorted
  2. do everyone’s laundry together
  3. do laundry all the time
  4. try to teach/delegate.

  i think the reason lots of people have problems with laundry is because there really is no great solution, only small tips to make it a little easier.

  one thing i do is:
  1) try to hang most clothes (we have ok closet space–we actually have a closet in each bedroom, which for us was a big move up), and
  2) have LESS clothes, especially for the kids–they ruin them anyway, haha. that way, pjs that are washed in the morning can be worn at night (no folding!), and the same for clothes for the next day, etc.
  3) all the same towels etc
  4) try to always wash and put the sheets immediately back on the bed (does not work if you have a heavy wetter/barfer, etc)
  5) if you wash at night, just hang dish towels back up (can still be wet), as well as hand towels, rags for the kitchen counter, etc–no folding and putting away, and they’ll be dry in the morning.

  i’d also love to hear tips from others–laundry is SUCH a pain, even though i cannot quite figure out why!

• I’ll just give you a bit of info I retained from my studies en textile design. Fibers only bleed color the first 2-4 times you wash them, until they get rid of the excess pigment. Red, black, turquoise, dark blues and purples are the colors that require heavy color saturation. Whites only stay brighter if you use bleach, not from the actual separation of lights/darks. All of that means that unless they’re new clothes, sorting laundry is a waste of time! 🙂

• Omg….I do laundry for 9 people. All ages and stages down to a 6 year old. Talk about laundry overwhelm! I try to do lots of sorting. Winter laundry is the worst. if anyone has tips for large families, please help….lol. Getting everyone to pick up after themselves , especially in the bathroom is my biggest issue.

  • When I had that problem I just started taking anything that was left in the bathroom. I would wash it, dry it and then box it away to be given to them for Christmas or a birthday. If they left it there again I donated it to Goodwill because they obviously didn’t care enough about it to keep it picked up. Even our 2 year old knows when she takes her clothes off, or someone helps her do it, she is to take it to the washing machine or the hamper.

• I don’t sort my laundry either – for the most part I find that modern fabrics don’t bleed like. The other thing is a lot of my clothes are used and already washed multiple times. If I have a questionable item, I soak in the kitchen sink first as a test (also add vinegar to prevent bleeding of color). When we have dirty stuff, it goes straight into the washing machine. We still have one hamper, but it is rarely used. Then I wash the load about once a day. Easy. I even have my 4 year old trained to throw (most of the time) her dirties straight into the washing machine. It is also easy to know when to start the machine because you can see when you actually have a full load. Try it.

  • It’s the dark jeans that bleed. Of course, now I am thinking about switching to no hamper at all. Might save the challenge for when the new baby is a bit older.

    • I wash light and darks together using the pigment absorbing cloths that go in the washer with the laundry. In Europe the sell re-usable ones that I find are good for about six months use for a family of four. I buy two every year when we visit my husband’s family in France. They’ve started selling “disposable” ones in Canada but I re-use them until they disintegrate (depending on the type I can get up to 20 loads out of one of these). Good luck!

    • I’ll combine laundry as well, but yes… those jeans are not nice to other items. They will ding up the lighter colors. Most times I’ll do jeans and other black/blue clothes together and then there’s everything else. Oh, but wait, I do a separate towel/linen load once a week. It never ends… I just try to do one load everyday (as suggested by Flylady http://www.flylady.net/d/habits-of-the-month/august/)

• Haha! Your mom sounds like mine. She asked if I wanted her to buy toddler beds for my kids and I said no, they can just sleep in a regular bed. “Oh….I already bought them and it was a final sale.” Good grief!

  • Your mom does sound like my mom!

• I have stopped sorting by color. But when we’re all home, I do sort by the person. And I always (when there is a full load) do a load of laundry every day.

  Sorting by the person makes sorting easy (each person has their own basket) and makes putting away easier (it all goes into one room). And when little miss (3 y/o) gets a bit older (probably 7ish), she can do her own on her designated day.

  No system is right or wrong. And each has its own ups and downs.

  • No system is right or wrong. And each has its own ups and downs.

    Yes! I try to be flexible on these household systems. Things tend to change as children get bigger, etc.

• I don’t bother with lights vs. darks except with my husband’s socks and undershirts. Everything goes in together and nothing has been damaged because of it. But I have to keep a hamper in every bedroom plus in the bathroom to keep laundry off the floor. Can’t wait til the kids are old enough to do their own!

  • Can’t wait till kids are old enough to do their own too. I did my own laundry from a very young age. I was shocked when I went to university and met people that had never turned a washing machine on.

    • My 5 year old and 3 year old can both do the laundry all by themselves… they are capable of hauling clothes to the laundry room (up and down stairs), putting in the front- loading machine, and switching it to the drier. They both know how much soap to put in, and where it goes. They can unload the drier and take the clothes to their room, and with help, sort and put away. They do need a step stool or something to help them reach buttons. They also can hang clothes on a low clothes line just fine, and love to take it down again and haul it back inside. Don’t wait too long to teach your kids this stuff, or they’ll realize they’re doing chores!!

      And, I don’t sort at all either. I wait until I have a full load, and then I run it. Cloth diapers and all. I run on hot water, so it all gets sanitized… if the diapers didn’t get clean, we’d have problems. if the diapers are getting clean, so would whatever is in there with them, right?

      • I love this! 🙂 My 5 year old has been doing laundry since he was 4. I never told him to. He just decided one day that he wanted to wear a particular outfit that wasn’t clean, so he up and did the laundry! 🙂

        I think my 2 year old will be able to do it soon too.

        Also- we don’t separate out lights & darks either- unless it’s something that was gifted to us brand new. I used to but hubby never did & I just decided that if it wasn’t ruining it, why add an extra step?!?!?

  • I don’t bother with separating lights and darks either. As a singleton (starting when I left for college and did my own laundry), I never had enough clothing for a full load of either. I did my laundry weekly (or else would run out of some things like socks, underwear) and always had two loads (clothing and bedding/towels). Fast-forward to living with my husband, and this was still the game plan because he did/does his own laundry. Now that we have kids, they share a hamper (I use a laundry basket, husband tosses his in a pile on the [cedar] closet floor) and we do their laundry (2-3 loads per week) together. This approach works for us and we’ll continue to stick with it until it doesn’t.

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