Unearthing the Ancient Secrets of Large Family Laundry Solutions

A 100% real life experience that anyone seeking large family laundry solutions can appreciate: You pause for a moment to catch your breath. Letting go of your piton, you nibble off one of your gloves with your teeth and wipe your brow. The climb has been long, but hope looms ahead. You have finally spotted daylight at the end of this cavern that has had you trapped for days. Supplies were running short, and you weren’t sure if you were going to make it. The avalanche of Mt. Laundry had nearly claimed its victim.

For large families, laundry easily sits in the top 3 most difficult and time-consuming tasks facing mothers. Essential laundry tips are definitely followed but don’t patch the problem whatsoever for the large family mom. Who, in this situation, hasn’t been told to simply “do a load a day” and had nothing in response but an icy stare. What shall I do next, O wise one, empty the ocean with a plastic bucket?

Real Tips for Managing Large Family Laundry

In my experience, a workable large family laundry system requires patience, planning, and cooperation. No simple helpful household tips are going to get the job done here. I’ve excavated some long lost secrets for you from healthy lifestyle blogs and articles focused on the matter at hand to help you solve your laundry woes.

Use bags for laundry rather than hampers

Hampers are not only heavier than bags, they can be ungainly to carry when full. Sadly, they can also stack fairly poorly with clothing overflowing from them. This can lead to the necessity for hallways half-blocked by a row of plastic while you try to get through it all. Additionally, the clothes from 1 ½ – 2 hampers can potentially fit into a single bag for one of your eldest to carry to the laundry room. As a cheap solution that can also improve laundry odors, you could opt to use scented trash bags to eliminate smell.

Morning chore time

Let morning chore time do double duty for you: it’s teaching the kids responsibility for themselves, and their younger siblings. Have the youngest help by getting the clothes into their laundry bags, and have the oldest carry the laundry bags down. This is a team effort and can get done fast with everyone pitching in.

Many mothers I’ve spoken to will try to get this done in a blitz before meal time. This also helps to have the kids energized to get their day going and down the stairs as they’re now out of bed.

Dot system

The interesting thing that they never tell you about socks is: they all look alike. If you use a permanent marker (or fabric marker) to distinguish between your kids’ clothes you can save yourself hours on folding. Another huge advantage to this method is that you can still have your younger ones help out with sorting and folding even when they don’t know what belongs to who!

Arrange laundry by room, not individual

When there are fewer children in a home, your sanity can afford simpler organization methods for clean clothes. Large family moms can distantly recall, as though from a dream, the “laundry day” of yesteryear where everything could go in one or two loads then sorting the few children’s clothes back out while folding. This approach simply won’t cut it anymore.

Getting your kids to bring in bags arranged by room helps from a few angles: you get to more indiscriminately empty their bags into the washer at the start of your cycle, but you also get to give them back bags to sort and fold themselves

While we’re at it, this may be a perfect time to consider an update to the general space. Your laundry room (or space you utilize for that purpose) receives a LOT of traffic. Getting it set up for optimal flow and transition from wash to dry could save you a ton of time in the future. We found a great article from Best Online Cabinets on remodeling laundry rooms with general tips and advice we found useful.

Weekend Laundry Roundup

For your 8- or 9-year-old who really want an opportunity to help around the house, the weekend is a great time to let them get involved with the laundry process. They can earn some chore money by actually helping you to fill the washer and dryer, and feel proud of helping out mama!