13 August, 2009

{laundry, laundry, laundry}

Jenny at Zach's Gang is hosting her very own blog carnival today...Thursday's Top Tips. Head on over to her blog, check out all the amazing tips and be sure to give her some bloggy love.

Now, here's my tip...it's kinda dirty! ;)

In an attempt to #1-make life a little easier for ME and #2-instill a little more responsibility into my children, I've changed the way I do our families laundry.

My old method of doing laundry consisted of everyone bringing their hampers into the bathroom on laundry day and I sorted all the laundry by color and a little bit by type(jeans, school uniforms, etc), then the gigantic task of LAUNDRY DAY began. {did you just hear me say LAUNDRY DAY in the big, scary voice of the blue blob on Monsters vs Aliens when he says "SUUUUU-SAAAANNN" b/c that's how it's supposed to sound?!} Once the clothes came out of the dryer, the basket was taken to my bed and dumped out to sort all the clothes into each persons pile and then was folded and put away. Now, please don't think that all of this happened in one day. I'd hate for you to think I'm perfect! More often than not, the clothes sat in the dryer so long that the dryer could have easily been called a "dresser" or I forgot a load of clothes in the washer for a day or maybe two and had to rewash it...cuz that's how I roll people.

When we decided to homeschool last year, I knew some of the household chores would have to be changed up a bit and laundry was the first to hit my radar. Thus was born my new and greatly love method of doing laundry. It's quite simple and hopefully will help you and your family.

Step 1---cut a hole in the box...oh wait, this isn't SNL nor is it a Christmas gift. Let me start over!

Step 1-have each child deliver their hamper to the laundry room
Step 2-turn the water temp on the washer to cold/cold
Step 3-start washer and add detergent
Step 4-dump entire contents of child's hamper into washer, close the lid and walk away
Step 5-put entire load of clothes into dryer
Step 6-put all clothes into basket and call for child
Step 7-hand basket of clean clothes to child w/instructions to put them away neatly in their room

That's it! This has really made doing laundry and the task of putting it all away so much easier on our whole family. I do help Eli fold some of his, but Emma is on her own.

I'd love to hear if you try this w/your family and how it works.

4 comments:

Shari @ My Cottage of Bliss said...

Thanks for stopping by and commenting on my bead board wallpaper project, Tonya. The wallpaper I used ("Super Fresco" made by Graham & Brown and ordered from Home Depot online) looks like the real thing, with actual grooves! It's pretty amazing stuff.

One warning: When I researched it, I found that some online retailers sold it pre-pasted, and some sold the unpasted. If you have a preference, (I wanted pre-pasted) just make sure you pay attention to which you are getting.

Jenny said...

Hey Tonya- thanks for the great tip, and thanks for taking time to join my carnival- I really appreciate it!! I agree that the kids need to help out with the laundry, and it's great to instill that idea when they're young ;-)

Beki - TheRustedChain said...

Okay, your first step 1 made me choke. Too funny!

Your kids do the folding themselves? Hmmmm... I wonder if I could get mine to do that.

Anonymous said...

Hey Tonya! You are my kind of mama! My girls are now 5 and (almost) 7. They began folding and putting away their own laundry this summer and they do a great job! never underestimate what young kids can do when given the instructions! :) Hannah folds all of my loads, too - for payment of $.25 a load! :)
I haven't folded laundry in over a month! LOL

~Heather