Yes, that is a gorilla in the dryer. Why do you ask??
I’m disorganized. I identify more with clutterers and hoarders than neatniks and Harriet Homemakers, but I love a clean room. BUT don’t love cleaning. AT. ALL. A room piled to the rafters with stuff gives me anxiety. I get twitchy when I walk in to such a room. I have many such rooms in my house. I know I should tackle the mess one pile at a time, but instead I leave the mess to pile up until a room is out of control. Piles and piles of mismatched, assorted items. Items needing a home somewhere else in the house.
I do cleaning on an as needed basis but don’t have a schedule of cleaning. My house shows it. The lack of a cleaning schedule is apparent in every room. When I entertain I have to do a massive, back-breaking clean. It’s awful. I hate how my lack of regular cleaning results in a cleaning nightmare.
I’m not a completely disorganized goner. I have the laundry. Aaahhh. The laundry! Now the laundry room is where messy me meets tidy me. Messy me gets the boot when it comes to laundry. Tidy me kicks messy me to the curb every time, Tidy me has systems and charts and organizational schemes to get the laundry DONE! I actually rock at doing laundry. I would give myself an A+ in laundry organization. Let’s not even grade my household organization, shall we?
What is my system for organized laundry you ask? Here’s the Musings from Me How To Do the Laundry System:
- I have ONLY one laundry hamper. The dirty laundry from two parents and three kids is placed in one small hamper. A hamper in every room would be too overwhelming. A large hamper would mean that the pile of laundry would be too large.
- I have SEVEN laundry baskets. That’s right, I said seven. I have three round small laundry baskets, 1 square basket, and three rectangular baskets. I keep one upstairs beside the laundry hamper so that I can carry the laundry to the basement laundry room. I keep the rest downstairs.
- I SORT laundry by col0r and fabric type. I stack towels and sheets in piles on the laundry room floor. Black, blue, and green pants stay together. Khaki pants go together. Blues, greens, purple, and black t-shirts in another pile. White t-shirts in another pile. Pale blues, pinks, and light greens in a pile. Dark socks and undies go together. White socks and undies in another pile.
- I only wash MASSIVE loads of laundry. I won’t do a load until I have a full pile. I love that my husband lends a hand with the laundry but I see red when I open the washer and see only 10 shirts and 3 pairs of pants. A regular load for me is at the very least least 30 t-shirts or 20 pairs of pants or 200 socks. That’s a lot of socks!
- Once washed, I stand beside the dryer and toss like items in to one of the MANY laundry baskets. Now you see why I have so many! I have a basket of shirts. Another basket of pants, shorts, and skirts. A basket of undies. Another of socks. And so on.
- I DELEGATE folding to the kids. My most brilliant idea, EVER. This summer I have all three kids folding a basket of laundry each..not daily but about twice a week. I find that if each child has a basket of similar types of clothing, say t-shirts, that the folding task gets done quicker than if the basket is loaded with a mix of shirts, pants, socks, and undies.
- I LEAVE the baskets of unfolded but sorted by clothing type laundry outside the laundry room so each kid can find a basket. Except for the socks. I’m the only one who sorts and matches the socks since none of them have the visual discrimination to tell the difference between a white sock with gray on the heel and a gray sock with white on the heel. I have mad sock sorting skillz!
What is your laundry tip?
