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Blog: Busy Moms Can Be Organized Too
 EVEN THE LAUNDRY COULD USE A SYSTEM
If you are like most households, there is laundry everywhere! On the beds, under the beds, in the bathroom, in the hallway. It's all in random piles just waiting to be washed.
I find most people do not use hampers; they use the "pile system". Every bedroom should have a clothes hamper in it. It can be fun and colorful for the kids but the adults should have a hamper that you are not ashamed to have out in the bedroom along with the rest of your furniture. There are some relatively nice looking hampers in bedding stores and department stores that anyone would be happy to display.
If possible, each bathroom should have a plastic or mesh hamper for wet towels and wash clothes. You want to avoid the build up of mold and mildew from wet towels. If there is not enough room in the bathroom, put one in the laundry room for this purpose.
The important thing to remember is to use them. Get out of the habit of getting undressed at the end of the day and just throwing your clothes on the floor where you stand. Put them in the hamper! When you are done your shower, either hang up the bath towel on a hook to dry and use again (this reduces the amount of laundry you need to do each week) or put it in the "towel hamper" along with the wash cloth. Hand towels should be added to the mix.
Next, set up a schedule so that you do one load of laundry per day. One day for whites, one for lights, one for darks, one for towels, one for sheets, one for jeans, and one for gentle wash. That's seven loads.
You can pull that particular day's laundry from the hampers or if everyone is old enough, they can bring pull out their own laundry from their hamper and add it to a laundry basket to be taken to the laundry room that day.
Another option is to have a laundry sorter sufficient enough to hold the seven types of clothing in the laundry room. Everyone can bring their dirty clothes and towels to the laundry room and sort it themselves accordingly.
Put a load in the washer each morning. If you leave for work, put the load in the dryer when you come home at the end of the day. You could also hang it on a drying rack if you don't want to put the clothes in the dryer. After dinner, fold the laundry and sort it by person so it can be put away.
You can use different colored canvas bins, each one for each family member. Put a name tag on it for easy identification. They are responsible to take the bin and put their clothes away in their drawers and closet (not the chair, the bed, the floor, etc.) and return the bin to the laundry room for the next day's load. This is a great way to get the family involved and teach them how to take care of their clothes.
With a good laundry system in place, you will find that the laundry does not build up in large piles all over the house and all the laundry is done by the end of the week without having to take an entire day to get it done.
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Audrey Cupo is a full-time Professional Organizer and sole proprietor of A BETTER SPACE based in Bucks County, PA. She specializes in residential organizing and focuses her business on helping busy moms get organized with her services and her U Can Do It product line. To sign up for her free monthly newsletter "Organizing News You Can Use", go to www.4abetterspace.com.
posted on: 12/25/2009 8:30:00 AM by Audrey Cupo
category: Family
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