I am not a fan of laundry. I’ve always thought it was because it was never done. As soon as you wash the last load, someone has something dirty again. But I recently realized not only do I hate that it is never complete, I hate that there is always laundry all over the house…clean baskets of things to fold, piles of laundry to put away, or baskets of folded clothes waiting to be taken up to the kids room, or the WORST, clean folded laundry unfolded by kids looking through it for their favorite jeans. And then there was the laundry room where people would just throw in any laundry sitting around the main floor…socks, sweatshirts, towels…anything someone had left laying around when they had to clean a room. So, the laundry room was always a mess.
For the past couple years, I have been making my 11 and 10 year old sons do their own laundry. This happened as a punishment for me doing their laundry and asking them to put it away and me later finding clean folded clothes back in the dirty clothes, in a basket under the bathroom sink, or just sitting in their room for weeks. So, I told them I was not doing their laundry anymore and they would have to do it. My older son does ok with it, though usually he is doing laundry at the worst possible times when he realizes Sunday night has has nothing to wear to school the next day. Or they will start their laundry and then leave it in the washer until I advance it so that I can use the washer for my own laundry. My 10 year old will just wear EVERYTHING he owns until he has about 6 loads of laundry to do. Then, he will start wearing all dirty clothes. In other words, he will never do his laundry. I had had enough of this system! I was sick of not having the washer available and sick of my kids wearing wrinkled and/or dirty clothes.
I have FINALLY come up with and awesome laundry system that is totally working for us! Granted, there are still clothes all over the kids rooms, but since I don’t have to live in their rooms it isn’t bothering me too much. Here is what I did:
