This is the laundry room, I spend a lot of time in here.
I have to share my inspiration in this area because it isn’t as bad as you would think.
When I first got here we had thirteen children in the house. All the laundry would come to the laundry room where I would wash, dry fold and attempt to sort according to size.
We had big boys and little boys, that wasn’t too bad. Then the girls….. We had them all different sizes and if you got this one’s clothes in that one’s pile the other child thought the other one was going to keep it. With girls they get attached to clothes and at times a shirt means more to them than their sister.
Then after my attempt to sort, the piles would go to a long table in the downstairs living room.
I would remind them that no one was to come to the dinner table until they got all of their clothes off the table. Then these clothes that meant more to them than their sister…. You guessed it…. Didn’t belong to anyone. Mountains of clothes not belonging to anyone or having been worn by anyone were now clean and folded and taking up space on my folding table. I was inspired! It all came to me at once.
Every room got a laundry basket, and two days that their laundry would be done a week.
Whatever came from that room went back into that room. No more sorting, no more claiming or not claiming. Laundry was simple! The schedule is posted in the kitchen, both bathrooms, in the hall and the laundry room. The older ones do their own laundry and the rule is that they have to spend a few minutes straitening up the laundry room first in order to use our machines and soap. The laundry room is never clean but it is much better and although laundry will never be easy it is simple.