We found a dryer on craigslist for 20 dollars!!!
We are going to go pick it up somehow tomorrow!
The nightmare of no dryer might be over. Can u even imagine, such a vital part of big family living, just interrupted? It has been horrible. BUT, soon we will be dryin up a storm, I hope.
What I want is two washers and two dryers, but I would settle for 2 washers and one dryer. anyhow, for now, that is only a dream.
We have new system, and I know big families are constantly in search of systems, so here is what we do:
We have 6 baskets, one for each person. I lay them all on the couch and then tkae huge mounds of clean clothes and toss them unfolded into their person-basket. then Daddy and the kids take them off to their appropriate rooms and, with some assistance for Charlies cloths of course, they get folded and put into the drawers and you have to bring Mama back the baskets. Somedays I will refill 'em, somedays that is all you have to do. I shouldnt say days, it is an evening chore.
What do you do to get the clean clothes back to the drawers, if you do at all? ; )
Happily married to my little twin starbaby since August 23, 1996
About Me
- Housefairy
- I have been a young Mama and an older Mama. I have been a homebirthing Mama and a 3 time c-sectioned Mama. I am very cutting edge and very old fashioned. I am married to my high school sweetheart and we have five children whom we homeschool with a very eclectic approach. I am a reformed closed-minded/ know-it-all AP/granola snoot who doesn't play those Mommy Wars anymore. I am first and foremost a feminist kindred spirit and friend to mothers, with a penchant for all things colorful and human and real. I am an interesting character and so are you. You will not like everything I have to say but I hope you visit often and can find something useful or good or true out of my writings.
8 comments:
I have 2 dirty clothes bins (Ikea!), one white and one black so the colors get sorted as they are tossed into the hampers. And a stainless steel diaper pail. I am the one who does the laundry by default I guess. When it's all washed and dried I put it in a big wicker laundry basket, dump it on our bed, sort, and put away. With a lot of "deconstructive" help from my little one, of course! She loves to pull everything out of the basket and then put it back in again.
Our laundry room is in our master bathroom. I love 2nd floor laundry rooms. So convenient. (Rixa)
Laundry is one of my bigger challenges.
We often live out of baskets for weeks at a time. When all the baskets are full of clean clothes (which I generally fold as I take them out of the drier), I put them all away.
That goes something like this:
The clothes were folded and put into piles in the baskets according to where they get put away. I'll have a whole basket of towels - a pile of bath towels, a pile of wash clothes, a pile of beach towels and bedding, a pile of rags. It's really easy to just toss them where they go - all in their big pile.
Tommy (7) is handed his clothes in piles - a pile of shirts "for the second drawer from the top", a pile of underpants and socks, a pile of pants... I put Ruthie's (3) things away. I give Julia (12) her basket - with the things in their piles - and she's supposed to put them in her drawers. I put away my own and Sheldon's clothes.
It's not the putting them away that's the hardest part for me. It's the getting the dirty things down into the laundry room. When the bathroom hamper (of towels and bedding only) gets full I wash it in two loads and generally get it put away quickly. It's the mountain of things in my room that haunts me! One day I'll be able to maintain the one or two loads a day quota. For now I walk past my mountain and pretend it isn't there!
And - by the way - I have turned Julia's laundry loose. It's her responsibility. I will take it out of the drier and fold it for her. That's it. She hasn't done any in a month - she'll be smelling really rank soon! But I am letting her deal with that.
Tommy helps switch loads from the washer to the drier and pulling things out of the drier for me to fold. In another couple of years he'll be responsible for his own laundry.
My method is to take the clothes out of the dryer and leave them in a pile on the bedroom floor until I remember to put them away. Usually, it's while I'm doing laundry again on the next laundry day. :/
And hubby is totally incapable of putting away his own clothes, let alone putting the dirties IN his laundry basket and not beside it, so yeah. It's a one-woman show.
What do you do to get the clean clothes back to the drawers, if you do at all? ; )
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA You know I come from an entire family and a very long history of not putting clean clothes away. We always took stuff as needed from the piles on the basement couch. I'm carrying on with the tradition, except w/out the couch. They are piled on beds, floors, dressers (not in but on), and many other flat and not so flat surfaces.
I can't imagine being without a dryer with so many people. Ours broke a few weeks ago. We just got a new/used dryer from one of those shady repaired appliances stores on 8 Mile. It's big and it rocks, and the cat pee smell went away pretty quickly. HAHAHAHAHA
Laundry... well, let's just say that it is the bane of my existence. I'm always behind and buried under piles of it, whether clean or dirty.
What do we do that actually works, though? I have everyone put their clothes in a central laundry hamper. When it begins to overflow, I take it down to the basement, and separate it into three bags that I have on a nice, roll-able stand - whites, darks, towels. As I wash them, I throw them on the couch downstairs or on the 8-foot table that is usually my craft table. This is where things hang up. Getting clean clothes folded and into drawers is the bottle neck of the whole process. Sometimes it works (kids help fold and put away), and I get my basement family room/library/craft room back. Other times, it doesn't, and the pile of clean clothes grows and grows and makes me want to cry. That's where we are right now.
Gotta go throw another load in the wash, and pile that pile even bigger. (imagine me rolling my eyes here)
My kids are teenagers so I have it a little easier. At around age 8, though, I gave them each two clothes baskets for their rooms and taught them to sort as they undressed. Then they bring me their baksets one load at a time - darks or lights - and I wash, dry and fold and then they take them back to their rooms. My son is actually much more organized with this than my daughter.
Having them sort before I wash is a HUGE plus for me.
At our house, we have "laundry day" on Sunday and Thursday. That's what works well for the two of us, although I totally understand (and remember) where there was enough to do a load every day when the kids were little.
My system has always been the "complete the mission" variety where it goes immediately from washer to dryer to being dumped on the bed for immediate foldings since my DH is allergic to cat hair.
Hmmm...well, we (the 4 of us) each have a hamper, and some awesome laundry baskets from Rubbermaid. When the hampers get fullish or we have no underpants, etc we empty them into the baskets, my husband refuses to seperate them so I have to do that later, but he does the laundry and we have to use a laundromat, grrrr. Anyway, so I get the clean clothes back in bunched up baskets and I separate mine, and each kid's clothes. And I throw any of the mister's clothes into an empty basket for him to deal with. Then I fold my clothes, and both kids' clothes, then Ken carries the basket of folded stuff upstairs because my back sucks, and then I put it all away because he doesn't do it right and I'm anal about that, ha!
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