Thursday, July 25, 2013

The Laundry Routine

I followed some advice from Pinewood Castle and made a laundry chart.  I don't know why I never made one before.  I make charts and lists all the time.  Needless to say, it helped.  It helped a lot! 
It's nothing fancy.  Basically something like the following:
 
  • Monday:  Wash darks (Mom, Dad, and 1 yr old's) - save jeans for T
  • Tuesday:  Wash the 5 & 7 year old's - add their whites to ours, wash the jeans, save dress clothes
  • Wednesday:   Wash our whites
  • Thursday:  Boys laundry day (ages 10, 12, 15) - save dress clothes
  • Friday:  Girls laundry day (14, 18), wash dress clothes
  • Saturday:  Wash towels and sheets
 
Other items are washed as needed. The kids all fold and put away their own clothes (OK - we are working on it with the 5 yr old). 
 
The older kids do their own laundry.  However, very frequently either I or my 14 yr old assistant, will wash the boys clothes.  If they are out working in the yard, as they often do, they bring their hampers to the laundry room and we cycle through for them.
 
This may not appear so funny to anyone else but I took this picture one Friday morning because I found it comical.   The boys' laundry had not gotten finished the day before, and instead of waiting, Terese bumped the older girls' hamper to the front and started washing their clothes.
 
I have to say....I have been getting a lot of help with the laundry lately.  Once I posted the chart I noticed Terese often grabs the laundry for the day and washes it all.
 
I've talked to the kids a lot about helping out around the house and we have assigned chores.  However, some kids have sort of found their niche - a  big chore and that's fine by me.  For example, our oldest son doesn't have much assigned to him inside the house since he takes care of most of the lawn maintenance.   I think I'll reassign Terese's other chores.  If she continues to help this much with the laundry (and cooking!) I think she found her niche.

 
 
 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow. that's so much laundry. I do maybe 3 or 4 loads for an entire week do the chart wouldn't work for us because we'd take too long ot have enough clothes. But, I do have a helper. She's 5 and LOVES TO DO THE LAUNDRY.