Laundry Room Organization (some tips on managing the chaos of laundry)

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We must be pretty good friends if I’ll show you a picture of my laundry room:). Laundry is such a huge part of our lives, no matter if there are 2 people living in your house or 10 there is always laundry to do and when it’s organized and caught up on life seems slightly on the amazing/wonderful side.  A few years back I was asked to give a class on organization, I thought that a little funny because I didn’t think I had a whole lot to share on being organized but as I started thinking I realized my life was pretty organized tailored to me. If someone else were to come in my house they may not think I was overly organized but to me it was organized because I had a system and I knew where things were. So I share this post in hopes to maybe give you a few ideas or spark something that will help you figure out a way to be more organized (something that works for you). Organization is huge as a mom, if I am organized everything goes/runs so much smoother if I am not chaos usually hits, so I try hard to stay organized. I’ll share organization tips along the way with this blog because it’s something I value a lot.

When we moved into this house I finally had a laundry room, a whole room just for laundry that was an amazing feeling, the builder even told me in the building process that my laundry room was wasted space and I kind of chuckled inside, he had obviously never done laundry for 9 people before. little did he know I would use every nook and cranny of that room. Anyway so I came up with this system when we moved in and I love it, it goes along with my post about teaching kids how to work hard, http://debsfaves.com/teaching-kids-the-value-of-hard-work/ by giving them a task that takes more than 20 minutes to complete plus it’s on going meaning they have to do it each week. It also leaves me folding very little laundry and I LOVE that. So here’s what I do… Under my folding table I have tall long bins for our dirty laundry, I separate the laundry into those bins, jeans, darks, lights, towels, and clothes I hang up after I wash them (this is just how I do it, it’s just suggestion do whatever works best for you). Then on the top of my folding table I have a laundry basket for each kid except my youngest and my oldest (my oldest does all his own laundry) and I do the youngest’s. I wash all the clothes and when they come out of the dryer I separate them at that moment into each kids basket unfolded, on Saturday they each take their bin to their bedroom, even my three year old, and fold all of it and put it away in their drawers or hang it up. Then they bring it back for me to fill up again. This system has worked great and it gives my kids a huge part to play in doing their own laundry while teaching them responsibility. You do have to realize their drawers won’t look perfect but I am totally okay with that (as a mom of 7 I have to let go of a few things) and hopefully over time they will learn how to fold better and then it will look better as they get practice (my older kids do a great job). I have done laundry for a lot of years and this has hands down been my favorite way to do it. If you don’t have a lot of space in your laundry room or no laundry room at all I think there are easy ways to improvise and still have a system similar to this. Let the laundry organization begin:).

Here is a link to a laundry basket and to some tall skinny ones like I have if you need somewhere to start. I got my baskets at Costco and the tall ones on the bottom at Target. You can get laundry baskets ANYWHERE.