Laundry Bliss

Do you dread laundry day? Are you digging in baskets all week long because you haven’t the time to put everything away? Are clothes scattered throughout the house? Do your kids dress like hobos because they can’t find the matching pieces to their outfits? I have felt your pain and I CAN HELP!

I can’t tell you how much time I spend doing laundry. I have been drowning in a mountain of laundry for the last couple of years. I have tried every method I have heard about to help me stay on top of things but nothing really helped. I wash and dry at least 3 loads a day. After that they used to kind of just hang out on my bed.

As a matter-of-fact, this is what our bedroom looked like most of the time. Actually, this is nothing, this looks pretty good.  Usually there is a huge mountain of laundry piled up all along the wall. There are also usually smaller piles of  laundry all over my bed sorted in accordance with which family member they belong to. Yet, they never get put away. Bedtime comes and we usually have to set the clothes on the floor just so we can go to bed.

So why wouldn’t I just keep the laundry in the laundry room? Ahhhh, yes. Well you see, this is the laundry room.

Whatever moron that designed the laundry room in our home must have not been thinking about the amount of clothes that would need to be washed in a house with 6 bedrooms. Hello, person who designed my laundry room.  6 bedrooms = at least 7 people! 7 people = 1 ton of dirty clothes! I despise the person who designed this laundry room. Because of said moron, idiot, stupid dummy, this is what the rest of the house often looks like:

Yes. I blame him and not my little piggies children.

Yikes. I just put pictures of my child stricken home on the internet. How embarrassing…

Okay, you get the idea. Clothes everywhere. There are clean clothes mixed in with the dirty. I can’ t tell you how frustrating it is to rewash already clean cloths. Unless you already have five million kids of your own, then you know exactly what I am talking about.

So what do we do? Make a family closet! I don’t know what genius though of it, but I owe her big time. So what is this family closet? It is where you use some sort of room, it could be your laundry room, a room close to your laundry room, or like in our case a master closet to house every member of the family’s clothes in one place. I seriously can’t believe I haven’t thought of this before. It is so great. I totally wish I could take credit. But I can’t. I am thinking Michelle Duggar? Anyone? All of the clothes are in one place, you can easily keep them sorted. It is a snap to put them all away as soon as you finish a load so clothes aren’t hanging out in baskets for days. It is easier to keep up with pieces to outfits. You can keep a handle on putting away last seasons clothes and see if each person is in need of new items.

So here is what I started with. We have 2 master closets. Mine is the larger one so I decided to use it. Here is what it looked like before I began.

Not too pretty right? It’s really a wreck. The bulk of it is the linens. This house doesn’t have a linen closet so I was using those shelves on the left to keep them put up. Any time the kids needed a blanket they would just come in and pull a whole pile of them out into the floor…and leave them. Of course.

Anyway, after a few minutes of planning and a few hours of work, this is what I ended up with.

It really is beautiful isn’t it?

So here is how I organized it. Each child has their own bins for (starting on the floor and the next bin right above that working your way up) (and left to right oldest to youngest)  in bin 1) misc. stuff- swim suits, sports uniforms.., in bin 2) pajamas , bin #3) panties/underwear, bin 4) socks, and finally bin # 5) for the girls only- tights/leggings/legwarmers. My toddler is still in cloth diapers for nap and bed time so I added another bin for that above the tights.  This makes it super simple to put all their stuff away, you can just stand their and toss it in the correct bin. Or better yet, enlist a kid to do it! I used my handy little label machine and made labels to stick on the front of each bin. I also made a bin for socks without a mate. Every once in a while I will have one of the little kids find mates. Its a great preschool sorting activity. Its homeschool. It counts. You see that larger bin above? That’s the winter hats, gloves, scarves, etc. box. In the spring and summer it will be the raincoat, umbrellas, sun hats, etc. box. To the left of that bin is another with all the girls dance leotards, dance tights,  shoes and gymnastics get-up. No more searching the house 10 minutes before class.

See how nice and neat and organized it is?

As for the hanging clothes I just put them in order from oldest to youngest in sections. I used some of those little dividers like you see in the clothing stores to separate them. All the big girls clothes fit on the wall to the right of the bins. The little kids stuff all fits nicely where my pants once hung. I really didn’t need that many pairs of pants anyway. Mostly because, a lot of them don’t actually fit really, that well, anymore. 5 kids, ya’know.

But I was not going to sacrifice any of my shoes. Or their space. Kids, get your own shoe space.

Or my bags (on the very top shelf in the photo below) No way are they going anywhere. I have an unhealthy attachment to my shoes and bags. Really.

You can also see that I squeezed a little folding table (with a basket underneath to put extra hangers) in so I could bring all of the clothes in here and just get them hung, folded, sorted and put away. No more going from the laundry room to the bedroom , hanging clothes on the door casing or thrown in bins waiting to be put away- for days. This new method is a huge time saver. Seriously. Try it.

I did have to pare down the kids clothing quite a bit to make them all fit but that was really a good thing. I finally got to get rid of those outfits that I just really didn’t like and the ones with stains or holes, even some I just got sick of looking at after 4 girls wearing them.  I found that my 11 year old daughter really doesn’t have anything to wear. She wasn’t just saying that.

I am thinking the family closet will help me to keep track of what clothing the kids have and what they need. That will save me money because I wont buy multiples of something they have because they just can’t find it. I like saving money. And since space is sort of at a premium, I will probably think a little harder about what I am buying because it, like..takes up space. Whats the saying?.. one thing in, one thing out?

Since it is fall and finally starting to get cold, I also pulled out all of the summer clothing and sorted them according to size and put them in bins for storage.  In the picture above you can see the door to the right of the shoes? It opens up to this storage area.

This is where I keep all the bins of sorted and labeled kids clothing, shoes that have been outgrown and my stock of maternity clothing. I love this room. It is very handy. Because it is so easy to get to, when I come across something that needs to go into storage when I am sorting clothes, it is easier to just toss it in the correct storage bin instead of setting it on the dresser and letting it sit for 2 weeks. ( oh, you have done that too? )

So where did I put all those linens? I put them in the closet of the room for which they belong. I also found that I could get rid of a few sets. I only change sheets once a week so I don’t think it will be too much a hassle to keep them in the closets. Another plus, now the kids have a ton of room in their closets to keep their toys put away. This was especially helpful for my two girls that share a room. Their rooms are looking much neater already. Though, we are kind of reorganizing a bit and you know what that looks like * sigh. I am not a fan of toy boxes so using closets for toys works out great. The kids also have room in their dresser drawers to keep their special things. Here they can put the things they don’t want to share or just need to keep out of the reach of the littler kids.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I also have my ironing station in there. Don’t ask me why there is a night light in there. I am not sure why I thought this was a good place for one. I must have had a reason…other than wasting electricity…

You can check out another family closet over at  Raising Olives.