Laundry Tips

A Willing Helper

My laundry tips have more to do with having willing helpers than any brilliance on my part. We have seven children and every day that I am home I try to do at least two loads of laundry. My second oldest daughter has had to work extra hard with schoolwork, but she is an A-1 wonderful helper in the home, especially with laundry. She is always willing to start a load, fold them and put them away.

My mother was always very detailed with laundry, you never wash darks with lights and you always separate towels and jeans from lighter weight clothes. The towels and jeans take longer to dry and will presumably wear out other clothes in the dryer if you wash them together. So I am pretty careful about how I sort, and we make sure to check pockets. I have had to spend lots of money fixing a pump on my front loader that was clogged with the contents of young boys pockets.

We lived off the grid in Mexico for a couple years, during that time we were insistent on the children wearing clothes more than once and we had labeled pegs in the bathroom so that they could use the same towel for a week, we were also buying water by the tank load so any means of cutting down on water use without being gross was necessary. Now that I live in the U.S. I am less of a dictator about dirty laundry but still have a fit when one of my 4 boys puts clothes in the laundry that they had just failed to put away when it arrived in their room.

In our current house the laundry room is large and sunny with plenty of room for folding clothes so we are working on keeping the laundry out of the living room, but it is still more fun to fold clothes while watching a movie. The main thing is to fold them while they are warm so they don't get all smushed together and wrinkled. The less stuff to iron the better.

This is not the area I feel the most in control of, but I sure do love taking care of my children by keeping them in clean clothes and working together with them to get the clothes clean.

You can see how other big families handle laundry at these blogs,

Carrie @ http://www.ourfullhouse.com/ Our Full House

Christi @ http://antsonafarm.blogspot.com/ Where the Creek Meets the Lake

Elizabeth @ http://yes-theyre-all-ours.blogspot.com/ Yes They're All Ours

Kathy @ http://www.kathymomofmany.blogspot.com/ Kathy Mom of Many

Kristy @ http://www.homemakerscottage.org/ Homemaker's Cottage

Lori @ http://1happybusymama.blogspot.com/ Happy Busy Mama

Monica @ http://www.naturalmamax4.blogspot.com/ atural Mama

Renee @ http://bakersdozen.typepad.com/ Bakers Dozen